THE HOUSEHOLD AT HILLPORT
She was walking with her customary air of haughty and rapt leisure across the marketplace of Bursley when she observed in front of her at the top of Oldcastle Street two men conversing and gesticulating vehemently each seated alone in a dogcart These persons who had met from opposite directions were her husband John Stanway the earthenware manufacturer and David Dain the solicitor who practised at Hanbridge Stanways cob always quicker to start than to stop had been pulled up with difficulty drawing his cart just clear of the other one so that the two portly and middleaged talkers were most uncomfortably obliged to twist their necks in order to see one another; the attitude did nothing to ease the obvious asperity of the discussion She thought the 2spectacle undignified and silly and she marvelled as all women marvel that men who conduct themselves so magisterially should sometimes appear so infantile She felt glad that it was Thursday afternoon and the shops closed and the streets empty
Immediately John Stanway caught sight of her he said a few words to the lawyer in a somewhat different key and descended from his vehicle As she came up to them Mr Dain saluted her with bashful abruptness and her proud face broke as if by the loosing of a spell into a generous and captivating smile Mr Dain blushed the vision was too much for his composure he moved his horse forward a yard or two and then jerked it back again gruffly advising it to stand still Stanway turned to her bluntly unceremoniously as to a creature to whom he owed nothing She noticed once more how the whole character of his face was changed under annoyance
Here Nora he said speaking with the raw anger of a man with a newborn grievance run this home for me Im going over to Hanbridge with Mr Dain
Very well she agreed with soothing calmness and taking the reins she climbed up to the high drivingseat
3And I say Nora—Woback he flamed out passionately to the impatient cob wherere your manners you idiot I say Nora I doubt I shall be late for tea—halfpast six Tell Milly she must be in The others too He gave these instructions in a lower tone and emphasised them by a stormy and ominous frown Then with an injured Now Dain he got into the equipage of his legal adviser and departed towards Hanbridge trailing clouds of vexation
Leonora drove smartly but cautiously down the steep slope of Oldcastle Street she could drive as well as a woman may A group of claysoiled girls lounging in the archway of a manufactory exchanged rude but admiring remarks about her as she passed The paces of the cob the dazzle of the silverplated harness the fine lines of the cart the unbending mien of the driver made a glittering cynosure for envy All around was grime squalor servitude ugliness the inglorious travail of two hundred thousand people above ground and below it filled the day and the night But here as it were suddenly out of that earthy and laborious bed rose the blossom of luxury grace and leisure the final elegance of the industrial district of the Five Towns The contrast between Leonora and the rough creatures in the archway between the 4flower and the phosphates which nourished it was sharp and decisive and Leonora in the September sunshine was well aware of the contrast She felt that the loudvoiced girls were at one extremity of the scale and she at the other and this arrangement seemed natural necessary inevitable
She was a beautiful woman She had a slim perfect figure quite simply she carried her head so high and her shoulders so square that her back seemed to be hollowed out and no tightness on the part of a bodice could hide this charming concavity Her face was handsome with its large regular features one noticed the abundant black hair under the hat the thick eyebrows the brown and opaque skin the teeth impeccably white and the firm unyielding mouth and chin Underneath the chin half muffling it came a white muslin bow soft frail feminate an enchanting disclaimer of that facial sternness and the masculinity of that tailormade dress a signal at once provocative and wistful of the woman She had brains they appeared in her keen dark eyes Her judgment was experienced and mature She knew her world and its men and women She was not too soon shocked not too severe in her verdicts not the victim of too many illusions And yet though everything about her witnessed 5to a serene temperament and the continual appeasing of mild desires she dreamed sadly like the girls in the archway of an existence more distinguished than her own an existence brilliant and tender where dalliance and high endeavour virtue and the flavour of sin eternal appetite and eternal satisfaction were incredibly united Even now on her fortieth birthday she still believed in the possibility of a conscious state of positive and continued happiness and regretted that she should have missed it
The imminence and the arrival of this dire birthday this day of wrath on which the proudest woman will kneel to implacable destiny and beg a reprieve had induced the reveries natural to it—the selfsearching the exchange of old fallacies for new the dismayed glance forward the lingering look behind Absorbed though she was in the control of the sensitive steed the field of her minds eye seemed to be entirely filled by an image of the woman of forty as imagined by herself at the age of twenty And she was that woman now But she did not feel like forty at thirty she had not felt thirty she could only accept the almanac and the rules of arithmetic The interminable years of her marriage rolled back and she was eighteen again ingenuous and trustful convinced that her versatile husband 6was unique among his sex The fading of a shortlived and factitious passion the descent of the unique male to the ordinary level of males the births of her three girls and their rearing and training all these things seemed as trifles to her mere excrescences and depressions in the vast tableland of her monotonous and placid career She had had no career Her strength of will of courage of love had never been taxed only her patience And my life is over she told herself insisting that her life was over without being able to believe it
As the dogcart was crossing the railway bridge at Shawport at the foot of the rise to Hillport Leonora overtook her eldest daughter She drew up From the height of the dogcart she looked at her child and the girlishness of Ethels form the self-consciousness of newlyarrived womanhood in her innocent and timid eyes the virgin richness of her vitality made Leonora feel sad superior and protective
Oh mother Wheres father Ethel exclaimed staring at her struck with a foolish wonder to see her mother where her father had been an hour before
What a schoolgirl she is And at her age I was a mother twice over thought Leonora 7but she said aloud Jump up quickly my dear You know Prince wont stand
Ethel obeyed awkwardly As she did so the mother scrutinised the rather lanky figure the long dark skirt the pale blouse and the straw hat in a single glance that missed no detail Leonora was not quite dissatisfied Ethel carried herself tolerably she resembled her mother she had more distinction than her sisters but her manner was often lackadaisical
Your father was very vexed about something said Leonora when she had recounted the meeting at the top of Oldcastle Street Wheres Milly
I dont know mother—I think she went out for a walk The girl added apprehensively Why
Oh nothing said Leonora pretending not to observe that Ethel had blushed If I were you Ethel I should let that belt out one hole not here my dear child not here When you get home How was Aunt Hannah
Every day one member or another of John Stanways family had to pay a visit to Johns venerable Aunt Hannah who lived with her brother the equally venerable Uncle Meshach in a little house near the parish church of St Lukes This was a social rite the omission of which 8nothing could excuse On that day it was Ethel who had called
Auntie was all right She was making a lot of parkin and of course I had to taste it all new you know Im simply stodged
Dont say stodged
Oh mother You wont let us say anything Ethel dismally protested and Leonora secretly sympathised with the grown woman in revolt
Oh And Aunt Hannah wishes you many happy returns Uncle Meshach came back from the Isle of Man last night He gave me a note for you Here it is
I cant take it now my dear Give it me afterwards
I think Uncle Meshachs a horrid old thing said Ethel
My dear girl Why
Oh I do Im glad hes only fathers uncle and not ours I do hate that name Fancy being called Meshach
That isnt uncles fault anyhow said Leonora
You always stick up for him mother I believe its because he flatters you and says you look younger than any of us Ethels tone was half roguish half resentful
9Leonora gave a short unsteady laugh She knew well that her age was plainly written beneath her eyes at the corners of her mouth under her chin at the roots of the hair above her ears and in her cold confident gaze Youth She would have forfeited all her experience her knowledge and the charm of her maturity to recover the irrecoverable She envied the woman by her side and envied her because she was lightsome thoughtless kittenish simple unripe For a brief moment vainly coveting the ineffable charm of Ethels immaturity she had a sharp perception of the obscure mutual antipathy which separates one generation from the next As the cob rattled into Hillport that aristocratic and plutocratic suburb of the town that haunt of exclusiveness that retreat of high life and good tone she thought how commonplace vulgar and petty was the opulent existence within those treeshaded villas and that she was doomed to droop and die there while her girls still unfledged might if they had the sense to use their wings fly away Yet at the same time it gratified her to reflect that she and hers were in the picture and conformed to the standards she enjoyed the admiration which the sight of herself and Ethel and the expensive cob and cart and accoutrements must arouse in the punctilious and stupid breast of Hillport
10She was picking flowers for the table from the vivid borders of the lawn when Ethel ran into the garden from the drawingroom Bran the St Bernard was loose and investigating the turf
Mother the letter from Uncle Meshach
Leonora took the soiled envelope and handing over the flowers to Ethel crossed the lawn and sat down on the rustic seat facing the house The dog followed her and with his great paw demanded her attention but she abruptly dismissed him She thought it curiously characteristic of Uncle Meshach that he should write her a letter on her fortieth birthday she could imagine the uncouth mixture of wit rude candour and wisdom with which he would greet her his was a strange and sinister personality but she knew that he admired her The note was written in Meshachs scraggy and irregular hand in three lines starting close to the top of half a sheet of note paper It ran Dear Nora I hear young Twemlow is come back from America You had better see as your John looks out for himself There was nothing else no signature
As she read it she experienced precisely the physical discomfort which those feel who travel for the first time in a descending lift Fifteen 11quiet years had elapsed since the death of her husbands partner William Twemlow and a quarter of a century since Williams wild son Arthur had run away to America Yet Uncle Meshachs letter seemed to invest these faroff things with a mysterious and disconcerting actuality The misgivings about her husband which long practice and continual effort had taught her how to keep at bay suddenly overleapt their artificial barriers and swarmed upon her
The long garden front of the dignified eighteenthcentury house nearly the last villa in Hillport on the road to Oldcastle was extended before her She had played in that house as a child and as a woman had watched from its windows the years go by like a procession That house was her domain Hers was the supreme intelligence brooding creatively over it Out of walls and floors and ceilings out of stairs and passages out of furniture and woven stuffs out of metal and earthenware she had made a home From the lawn in the beautiful sadness of the autumn evening any one might have seen and enjoyed the sight of its high French windows its glowing sunblinds its faintlytinted and beribboned curtains its creepers its glimpses of occasional tables tall vases and dressingmirrors But Leonora as she sat holding the letter in her 12long white hand could call up and see the interior of every room to the most minute details She the housemistress knew her home by heart She had thought it into existence; and there was not a cabinet against a wall not a rug on a floor not a cushion on a chair not a knicknack on a mantelpiece not a plate in a rack but had come there by the design of her brain Without possessing much artistic taste Leonora had an extraordinary talent for domestic equipment organisation and management She was so interested in her home so exacting in her ideals that she could never reach finality the place went through a constant succession of improvements its comfort and its attractiveness were always on the increase And the result was so striking that her supremacy in the womans craft could not be challenged All Hillport including her husband bowed to it Mrs Stanways principles schemes methods even her trifling dodges were mentioned with deep respect by the ladies of Hillport who often expressed their astonishment that although the wheels of Mrs Stanways household revolved with perfect smoothness Mrs Stanway herself appeared never to be doing anything That astonishment was Leonoras pride As her brain marshalled with ease the thousand diverse details of the wonderful domestic 13machine she could appreciate better than any other woman in Hillport without vanity and without humility the singular excellence of her gifts and of the organism they had perfected And now this creation of hers this complex structure of mellow brickandmortar and fine chattels and nice and luxurious habit seemed to Leonora to tremble at the whisper of an enigmatic message from Uncle Meshach The foreboding caused by the letter mingled with the menace of approaching age and with the sadness of the early autumn and confirmed her mood
Millicent her youngest ran impulsively to her in the garden Millicent was eighteen and the days when she went to school and wore her hair in a long plait were still quite fresh in the girls mind For this reason she was often inordinately and aggressively adult
Mamma Im going to have my tea first thing The Burgesses have asked me to play tennis I neednt wait need I It gets dark so soon As Millicent stood there ardently persuasive she forgot that adult persons do not stand on one leg or put their fingers in their mouths
Leonora looked fondly at the sprightly girl vain selfconscious and blonde and pretty as a doll in her white dress She recognised all 14Millicents faults and shortcomings and yet was overcome by the charm of her presence
No Milly you must wait Throned on the rustic seat inscrutable and tyrannous Leonora a wistful wayward atom in the universe laid her command upon the other wayward atom and she thought how strange it was that this should be
But Ma——
Father specially said you must be in for tea You know you have far too much freedom What have you been doing all the afternoon
I havent been doing anything Ma
Leonora feared for the strict veracity of her youngest but she said nothing and Milly retired full of annoyance against the inconceivable caprices of parents
At twenty minutes to seven John Stanway entered his large and handsome diningroom having been driven home by David Dain whose residence was close by Three languorous women and the erect and motionless parlourmaid behind the door were waiting for him He went straight to his carvers chair and instantly the women were alert galvanised into vigilant life Leonora opposite to her husband began to pour out the tea the impassive parlourmaid stood consummately ready to hand the cups Ethel and Millicent took their seats along one side of the 15table with an air of nonchalance which was far from sincere a chair on the other side remained empty
Turn the gas on Bessie said John Daylight had scarcely begun to fail but nevertheless the mans tone announced a grievance that with halfadozen women in the house he the exhausted breadwinner should have been obliged to attend to such a trifle Bessie sprang to pull the chain of the Welsbach tap and the white and silver of the teatable glittered under the yellow light Every woman looked furtively at Johns morose countenance
Neither dark nor fair he was a tall man verging towards obesity and the fulness of his figure did not suit his thin rather handsome face His age was fortyeight There was a small bald spot on the crown of his head The clipped brown beard seemed thick and plenteous but this effect was given by the coarseness of the hairs not by their number the moustache was long and exiguous His blue eyes were never still and they always avoided any prolonged encounter with other eyes He was a personable specimen of the clever and successful manufacturer His clothes were well cut the necktie of a discreet smartness His grandfather had begun life as a working potter nevertheless John Stanway spoke 16easily and correctly in a refined variety of the broad Five Towns accent he could open a door for a lady and was noted for his neatness in compliment
It was his ambition always to be calm oracular weighty always to be sure of himself but his temperament was incurably nervous restless and impulsive He could not be still he could not wait Instinct drove him to action for the sake of action instinct made him seek continually for notice prominence comment These fundamental appetites had urged him into public life—to the Borough Council and the Committee of the Wedgwood Institution He often affected to be buried in cogitation upon municipal and private business affairs when in fact his attention was disengaged and watchful Leonora knew that this was so tonight The idea of his duplicity took possession of her mind Deeps yawned before her deeps that swallowed up the solid and charming house and the comfortable family existence as she glanced at that face at once strange and familiar to her Is it all right she kept thinking Is John all that he seems I wonder whether he has ever committed murder Yes even this absurd thought which she knew to be absurd crossed her mind
Wheres Rose he demanded suddenly in 17the depressing silence of the teatable as if he had just discovered the absence of his second daughter
Shes been working in her room all day said Leonora
Thats no reason why she should be late for tea
At that moment Rose entered She was very tall and pale her dress was a little dowdy Like her father and Millicent she carried her head forward and had a tendency to look downwards and her spine seemed flaccid Ethel was beautiful or about to be beautiful Millicent was pretty Rose plain Rose was deficient in style She despised style and regarded her sisters as frivolous ninnies and gadabouts She was the serious member of the family and for two years had been studying for the Matriculation of London University
Late again said her father I shall stop all this exam work
Rose said nothing but looked resentful
When the hot dishes had been partaken of Bessie was dismissed and Leonora waited for the bursting of the storm It was Millicent who drew it down
I think I shall go down to Burgesses after 18all mamma Its quite light she said with audacious pertness
Her father looked at her
What were you doing this afternoon Milly
I went out for a walk pa
Who with
No one
Didnt I see you on the canalside with young Ryley
Yes father He was going back to the works after dinner and he just happened to overtake me
Milly and Ethel exchanged a swift glance
Happened to overtake you I saw you as I was driving past over the canal bridge You little thought that I saw you
Well father I couldnt help him overtaking me Besides——
Besides he took her up You had your hand on his shoulder How do you explain that
Millicent was silent
Im ashamed of you regularly ashamed You with your hand on his shoulder in full sight of the works And on your mothers birthday too
Leonora involuntarily stirred For more 19than twenty years it had been his custom to give her a kiss and a tenpound note before breakfast on her birthday but this year he had so far made no mention whatever of the anniversary
Im going to put my foot down he continued with grieved majesty I dont want to but you force me to it Ill have no goingson with Fred Ryley Understand that And Ill have no more idling about You girls—at least you two—are boneidle Ethel shall begin to go to the works next Monday I want a clerk And you Milly must take up the housekeeping Mother youll see to that
Leonora reflected that whereas Ethel showed a marked gift for housekeeping Milly was instinctively averse to everything merely domestic But with her acquired fatalism she accepted the ukase
You understand said John to his pert youngest
Yes papa
No more carryingon with Fred Ryley—or any one else
No papa
Ive got quite enough to worry me without being bothered by you girls
Rose left the table consciously innocent both of sloth and of light behaviour
20What are you going to do now Rose He could not let her off scotfree
Read my chemistry father
Youll do no such thing
I must if Im to pass at Christmas she said firmly Its my weakest subject
Christmas or no Christmas he replied Im not going to let you kill yourself Look at your face I wonder your mother——
Run into the garden for a while my dear said Leonora softly and the girl moved to obey
Rose he called her back sharply as his exasperation became fidgetty Dont be in such a hurry Open the window—an inch
Ethel and Millicent disappeared after the manner of young foxterriers they did not visibly depart they were there one looked away they were gone In the bedroom which they shared the door well locked they threw oft all restraints conventions pretences and discussed the world and their own world with terrible candour This sacred and untidy apartment where many of the habits of childhood still lingered was a retreat a sanctuary from the law and the fastness had been ingeniously secured against surprise by the peculiar position of the bedstead in front of the doorway
21Father is a donkey said Ethel
And ma never says a word said Milly
I could simply have smacked him when he brought in mothers birthday Ethel continued savagely
So could I
Fancy him thinking its you What a lark
Yes I dont mind said Milly
You are a brick Milly And I didnt think you were I didnt really
What a horrid pig you are Eth Milly protested and Ethel laughed
Did you give Fred my note all right Ethel demanded
Yes answered Milly I suppose hes coming up tonight
I asked him to
Therell be a frantic row one day Im sure there will Milly said meditatively after a pause
Oh theres bound to be Ethel assented and she added Mother does trust us Have a choc
Milly said yes and Ethel drew a box of bonbons from her pocket
They seemed to contemplate with a fearful joy the probable exposure of that life of flirtations and chocolate which ran its secret course side by side with the other life of demure propriety 22acted out for the benefit of the older generation If these innocent and inexperienced souls had been accused of leading a double life they would have denied the charge with genuine indignation Nevertheless driven by the universal longing and abetted by parental apathy and parental lack of imagination they did lead a double life They chafed bitterly under the code to which they were obliged ostensibly to submit In their moods of revolt they honestly believed their parents to be dull and obstinate creatures who had lost the appetite for romance and ecstasy and were determined to mortify this appetite in others They desired heaps of money and the free informal companionship of very young men The latter—at the cost of some intrigue and subterfuge—they contrived to get But money they could not get Frequently they said to each other with intense earnestness that they would do anything for money and they repeated passionately anything
Just look at that stuckup thing said Milly laughing They stood together at the window and Milly pointed her finger at Rose who was walking conscientiously to and fro across the garden in the gathering dusk
Ethel rapped on the pane and the three sisters exchanged friendly smiles
23Rosie will never pass her exam not if she lives to be a hundred said Ethel And can you imagine father making me go to the works Can you imagine the sense of it
He wont let you walk up with Fred at nights said Milly so you neednt think
And your housekeeping Ethel exclaimed What a treat father will have at meals
Oh I can easily get round mother said Milly with confidence I cant housekeep and ma knows that perfectly well
Well father will forget all about it in a week or two thats one comfort Ethel concluded the matter Are you going down to Burgesses to see Harry she inquired observing Milly put on her hat
Yes said Milly Cissie said shed come for me if I was late Youd better stay in and be dutiful
I shall offer to play duets with mother Dont you be long Lets try that chorus for the Operatic before supper
That night after the girls had kissed them and gone to bed John and Leonora remained alone together in the drawingroom The first fire of autumn was burning in the grate and at the other end of the long room dark curtains 24were drawn across the French window Shaded candles lighted the grand piano at which Leonora was seated and a single gas jet illuminated the region of the hearth where John lounging almost at full length in a vast chair read the newspaper otherwise the room was in shadow John dropped the Signal which slid to the hearthrug with a rustle and turned his head so that he could just see the left side of his wifes face and her left hand as it moved over the keys of the piano She played with gentle monotony and her playing seemed perfunctory yet agreeable John watched the glinting of the four rings on her left hand and the slow undulations of the drooping lace at her wrist He moved twice and she knew he was about to speak
I say Leonora he said in a confidential tone
Yes my dear she responded complying generously with his appeal for sympathy She continued to play for a moment but even more softly and then as he kept silence she revolved on the pianostool and looked into his face
What is it she asked in a caressing voice intensifying her femininity forgiving him excusing him thinking and making him think what a good fellow he was despite certain superficial faults
25You knew nothing of this Ryley business did you he murmured
Oh no Are you sure theres anything in it I dont think there is for an instant And she did not Even the placing of Millys hand on Fred Ryleys shoulder in full sight of the street even this she regarded only as the pretty indiscretion of a child Oh theres nothing in it she repeated
Well theres got to be nothing in it You must keep an eye on em I wont have it
She leaned forward and resting her elbows on her knees put her chin in her long hands Her bangles disappeared amid lace
Whats the matter with Fred said she Hes a relation and youve said before now that hes a good clerk
Hes a decent enough clerk But hes not for our girls
If its only money—— she began
Money John cried Hell have money Oh hell have money right enough Look here Nora Ive not told you before but Ill tell you now Uncle Meshachs altered his will in favour of young Ryley
Oh Jack
John Stanway stood up gazing at his wife with an air of martyrised virtue which said 26There what do you think of that as a specimen of the worries which I keep to myself
She raised her eyebrows with a gesture of deep concern And all the time she was asking herself Why did Uncle Meshach alter his will Why did he do that He must have had some reason This question troubled her far more than the blow to their expectations
Johns maternal grandfather had married twice By his first wife he had had one son Shadrach and by his second wife two daughters and a son Mary Johns mother Hannah and Meshach The last two had never married Shadrach had estranged all his family except old Ebenezer by marrying beneath him and Mary had earned praise by marrying rather well These two children by a useful whim of the eccentric old man had received their portions of the patrimony on their respective weddingdays They were both dead Shadrach amiable but incompetent had died poor leaving a daughter Susan who had repeated even more reprehensibly her fathers sin of marrying beneath her She had married a working potter and thus reduced her branch of the family to the status from which old Ebenezer had originally raised himself Fred Ryley now an orphan was Susans only child As an act of charity John Stanway had given Fred Ryley a 27stool in the office of his manufactory but though Freds mother was Johns first cousin John never acknowledged the fact John argued that Freds mother and Freds grandfather had made fools of themselves and that the consequences were irremediable save by Freds unaided effort Such vicissitudes of blood and the social contrasts resulting therefrom are common enough in the history of families in democratic communities
Old Ebenezers will left the residue of his estate reckoned at some fifteen thousand pounds to Meshach and Hannah as joint tenants with the remainder absolutely to the survivor of them By this arrangement which suited them excellently since they had always lived together though neither could touch the principal of their joint property during their joint lives the survivor had complete freedom to dispose of everything Both Meshach and Hannah had made a will in sole favour of John
Yes John said again hes altered it in favour of young Ryley David Dain told me the other day Uncle told Dain he might tell me
Why has he altered it Leonora asked aloud at last
John shook his head Why does Uncle 28Meshach do anything He spoke with sarcastic irritation I suppose hes taken a sudden fancy for Susans child after ignoring him all these years
And has Aunt Hannah altered her will too
No Im all right in that quarter
Then if your Aunt Hannah lives longest youll still come in for everything just as if your Uncle Meshach hadnt altered his will
Yes But Aunt Hannah wont live for ever And Uncle Meshach will And where shall I be if she dies first He went on in a different tone Of course one of ems bound to die soon Uncles sixtyfour if hes a day and the old ladys a year older And I want money
Do you Jack really she said Long ago she had suspected it though John never stinted her Once more the solid house and their comfortable existence seemed to shiver and be engulfed
By the way Nora he burst out with sudden bright animation Ive been so occupied today I forgot to wish you many happy returns And heres the usual I hadnt got it on me this morning
He kissed her and gave her a tenpound note
Oh thanks Jack she said glancing at 29the note with a factitious curiosity to hide her embarrassment
Youre goodlooking enough yet he exclaimed as he gazed at her
He wants something out of me He wants something out of me she thought as she gave him a smile for his compliment And this idea that he wanted something that circumstances should have forced him into the position of an applicant distressed her She grieved for him She saw all his good qualities—his energy vitality cleverness facile kindliness his large masculinity It seemed to her as she gazed up at him from the musicstool in the shaded solitude or the drawingroom that she was very intimate with him and very dependent on him and she wished him to be always flamboyant imposing and successful
If you are at all hard up Jack—— She made as if to reject the note
Oh get out he laughed Its not a tenner that Im short of I tell you what you can do he went on quickly and lightly I was thinking of raising a bit temporarily on this house Five hundred say You wouldnt mind would you
The house was her own property inherited from an aunt Johns suggestion came as a 30shock to her To mortgage her house this was what he wanted
Oh yes certainly if you like she acquiesced quietly But I thought—I thought business was so good just now and——
So it is he stopped her with a hint of annoyance Im short of capital Always have been
I see she said not seeing Well do what you like
Right my girl Now—roost He extinguished the gas over the mantelpiece
The familiar vulgarity of some of his phrases always vexed her and roost was one of these phrases In a flash he fell from a creature engagingly masculine to the useworn daily sharer of her monotonous existence
Have you heard about Arthur Twemlow coming over she demanded half vindictively as he was preparing to blow out the last candle on the piano He stopped
Whos Arthur Twemlow
Mr Twemlows son of course she said From America
Oh Him Coming over did you say I wonder what he looks like Who told you
Uncle Meshach And he said I was to say 31you were to look out for yourself when Arthur Twemlow came I dont know what he meant One of his jokes I expect She tried to laugh
John looked at her and then looked away and immediately blew out the last candle But she had seen him turn pale at what Uncle Meshach had said Or was that pallor merely the effect on his face of raising the coloured candleshade as he extinguished the candle She could not be sure
Uncle Meshach ought to be in the lunatic asylum I think Johns voice came majestically out of the gloom as they groped towards the door
We shall have to be polite to Arthur Twemlow when he comes if he is coming said John after they had gone upstairs I understand hes quite a reformed character
Because she fancied she had noticed that the window at the end of the corridor was open she came out of the bedroom a few minutes later and traversed the dark corridor to satisfy herself and found the window wide open The night was cloudy and warm and a breeze moved among the foliage of the garden In the mysterious diffused light she could distinguish the forms of 32the poplar trees Suddenly the bushes immediately beneath her were disturbed as though by some animal
Good night Ethel
Good night Fred
She shook with violent agitation as the amazing adieu from the garden was answered from the direction of her daughters window But the secondary effect of those words so simply and affectionately whispered in the darkness was to bring a tear to her eye As the mother comprehended the whole staggering situation the woman envied Ethel for her youth her naughty innocence her romance her incredibly foolish audacity in thus risking the disaster of parental wrath Leonora heard cautious footsteps on the gravel and the slow closing of a window My life is over she said to herself And hers beginning And to think that this afternoon I called her a schoolgirl What romance have I had in my life
She put her head out of the window There was no movement now but above her a radiance streaming from Roses dormer showed that the serious girl of the family defying commands plodded obstinately at her chemistry As Leonora thought of Roses ambition and Ethels clandestine romance and little Millicents complicity in 33that romance and Johns sinister secrets and her own ineffectual repining—as she thought of these five antagonistic preoccupied souls and their different affairs the pathos and the complexity of human things surged over her and overwhelmed her
34
CHAPTER II
Meshach and Hannah
The little old bachelor and spinster were resting after dinner in the backparlour of their house near the top of Church Street In that abode they had watched generations pass and manners change as one list hearthrug succeeded another in the backparlour Meshach had been born in the front bedroom and he meant to die there Hannah had also been born in the front bedroom but it was through the window of the back bedroom that the housewifes soul would rejoin the infinite The house which Meshachs grandfather first of his line to emerge from the grey mass of the proletariat had ruined himself to build was a sixroomed dwelling of honest workmanship in red brick and tile with a beautiful pillared doorway and fanlight in the antique taste It had cost two hundred pounds and was the monument of a lifes ambition Mortgaged by its hardpressed creator and then sold by order of the mortgagee it had ultimately been bought 35again in triumph by Meshachs father who made thirty thousand pounds out of pots without getting too big for it and left it unspoilt to Meshach and Hannah Only one alteration had ever been made in it and that completed on Meshachs fiftieth birthday admirably exemplified his temperament Because he liked to observe the traffic in Church Street and liked equally to sit in the backparlour near the hob he had with an oriental grandeur of self-indulgence removed the dividing wall between the front and the back parlours and substituted a glass partition so that he could simultaneously warm the fire and keep an eye on the street The town said that no one but Meshach could have hit on such a scheme or would have carried it out with such an object: it crowned his reputation
John Stanways maternal uncle was one of those individuals whose character at once strong egotistic and peculiar so forcibly impresses the community that by contrast ordinary persons seem to be without character such men are therefore called distinctively characters and it is a matter of common experience that whether through the unconscious prescience of parents or through that felicitous sense of propriety which often guides the hazards of destiny they usually bear names to match their qualities 36Meshach Myatt Meshach Myatt What piquant curious syllables to roll glibly off the tongue and to repeat for the pleasure of repetition And what a vision of Meshach their utterance conjured up At sixtyfour stereotyped by age fixed and confirmed in singularity Meshachs figure answered better than ever to his name He was slight of bone and spare in flesh with a hardly perceptible stoop He had a red seamed face Under the small pale blue eyes genial and yet frigid there showed a thick raw red selvedge of skin and below that the skin was loose and baggy the wrinkled eyelids instead of being shaped to the pupil came down flat and perpendicular His nose and chin were witchlike the nostrils large and elastic the lips drawn tight together curved downwards indifferently captious a short white beard grew sparsely on the chin the skin of the narrow neck was fantastically drawn and creased His limbs were thin the knees and elbows sharpened to a fine point the hands very long with blue corded veins As a rule his clothes were a distressing combination of black and dark blue either the coat the waistcoat or the trousers would be black the rest blue the trousers had the oldfashioned flappockets like a sailors with a complex apparatus of buttons He wore loose white cuffs that were continually 37slipping down the wrist a starched dickey a collar of too lenient flexure and a black necktie with a made bow that was fastened by means of a button and buttonhole under the chin to the right twenty times a day Meshach had to secure this precarious cravat Lastly the top and bottom buttons of his waistcoat were invariably loose
He was of that small and lonely minority of men who never know ambition ardour zeal yearning tears whose convenient desires are capable of immediate satisfaction of whom it may be said that they purchase a secondrate happiness cheap at the price of an incapacity for deep feeling In his seventh decade Meshach Myatt could look back with calm satisfaction at a career of uninterrupted nonchalance and idleness The favourite of a stern father and of fate he had never done a hard days work in his life When he and Hannah came into their inheritance he realised everything except the house and invested the proceeds in Consols With a roof four hundred a year from the British Empire a tame capable sister and notoriously good health he took final leave of care at the age of thirtytwo He wanted no more than he had Leisure was his chief luxury he watched life between meals and had time to think about what he saw Being gifted with a vigorous and original mind 38that by instinct held formulas in defiance he soon developed a philosophy of his own and his reputation as a character sprang from the first diffident wayward expressions of this philosophy Perceiving that the town not unadmiringly deemed him odd he cultivated oddity Perceiving also that it was sometimes astonished at the extent of his information about hidden affairs he cultivated mystery the knowledge of other peoples business and the trick of unexpected appearances At forty his fame was assured at fifty he was an institution at sixty an oracle
Meshachs a mixture ran the local phrase but in this mixture there was a less tedious posturing and a more massive intellect than usually go to the achievement of a provincial renown such as Meshachs The mans externals were deceptive for he looked like a local curiosity who might never have been out of Bursley Meshach however travelled sometimes in the British Isles and thereby kept his ideas from congealing And those who had met him in trains and hotels knew that porters waiters and drivers did not mistake his shrewdness for that of a simpleton determined not to be robbed that he wanted the right things and had the art to get them in short that he was an expert in travel Like many old provincial bachelors while frugal 39at home he could be profuse abroad exercising the luxurious freedom of the bachelor In the course of years it grew slowly upon his fellow pewholders at the big Sytch Chapel that he was worldlyminded and possibly contemptuous of their codes some who made a specialty of smelling rats accused him of gaiety
Youd happen better get something extra for tea sister said Meshach rousing himself
Why brother demanded Hannah
Some sausage happen Meshach proceeded
Is any one coming she asked
Or a bit of fish said Meshach gazing meditatively at the fire
Hannah rose and interrogated his face You ought to have told me before brother Its past three now and Saturday afternoon too So saying she hurried anxiously into the kitchen and told the servant to put her hat on
Who is it thats coming brother she inquired later with timid ravenous curiosity
I see youll have it out of me said Meshach who gave up mysteries as a miser parts with gold Its Arthur Twemlow from New York and let that stop your mouth
Thus with the utterance of this name in the prim archaic stuffy little backparlour Meshach raised the curtain on the last act of a 40drama which had slumbered for fifteen years since the death of William Twemlow and which the principal actors in it had long thought to be concluded or suppressed
The whole matter could be traced back through a series of situations which had developed one out of another to the character of old Twemlow but the final romantic solution was only rendered possible by the peculiarities of Meshach Myatt William Twemlow had been one of those men in whom an unbridled appetite for virtue becomes a vice He loved God with such virulence that he killed his wife drove his daughter into a fatuous marriage and quarrelled irrevocably with his son The too sensitive wife died for lack of joy Alice escaped to Australia with a parson who never accomplished anything but a large family and Arthur at the age of seventeen precociously cursed his father and sought in America a land where there were fewer commandments Then old Twemlow told his junior partner John Stanway that the ways of Providence were past finding out Stanway sympathised with him partly from motives of diplomacy and partly from a genuine misunderstanding of the case for Twemlow mild earnest and a generous supporter of charities was much respected in the town and his lonely predicament 41excited compassion most people looked upon young Arthur as a godless and heartless vagabond
Alices husband was a fool impulsive and vain and despite introductions no congregation in Australia could be persuaded to listen to his version of the gospel Alice gave birth to more children than bad sermons could keep alive and soon the old man at Bursley was regularly sending remittances to her Twemlow desired fervently to do his duty and moreover the estrangement from his son increased his satisfaction in dealing handsomely with his daughter the son would doubtless learn from the daughter how much he had lost by his impiety Seven years elapsed so and then the parson gave up his holy calling and became a teablender in Brisbane Twemlow was shocked at this defection which seemed to him sacrilegious and a chance phrase in a letter of Alices requesting capital for the new venture—a too assured demand an insufficient gratitude for past benefits Alice never quite knew what—brought about a second breach in the Twemlow family The paternal purse was closed and perhaps not too early for the improvidence of the teablender and Alices fecundity were a gulf whose depth no munificence could have plumbed Again John Stanway sympathised with the now enfeebled old man John advised him to retire 42and Twemlow decided to do so receiving onethird of the net profits of the partnership business during life In two years he was bedridden and the miserable victim of a housekeeper but though both Alice and Arthur attempted reconciliation some fine point of conscience obliged him to ignore their overtures John Stanway his last remaining friend called often and chatted about business which he lamented was far from being what it ought to be Twemlows death was hastened by a fire at the works it happened that he could see the flames from his bedroom window he survived the spectacle five days Before entering into his reward the great pietist wrote letters of forgiveness to Alice and Arthur and made a will of which John Stanway was sole executor in favour of Alice The town expressed surprise when it learnt that the estate was sworn at less than a thousand pounds for the dead mans share in the profits of Twemlow Stanway was no secret and Stanway had been living in splendour at Hillport for several years John when questioned by gossips referred sadly to Alices husband and to the depredations of housekeepers In this manner the name and memory of the Twemlows were apparently extinguished in Bursley
But Meshach Myatt had witnessed the fire 43at the works he had even remained by the canal side all through that illuminated night and an adventure had occurred to him such as occurs only to the Meshach Myatts of this world The fire was threatening the office and Meshach saw his nephew John running to a place of refuge with a drawer snatched out of an American desk the drawer was loaded with papers and books and as John ran a small book fell unheeded to the ground Meshach cried out to John that he had dropped something but in the excitement and confusion of the fire his rather highpitched voice was not heard He left the book lying where it fell halfanhour afterwards he saw it again picked it up and put it in his pocket It contained some interesting informal private memoranda of the annual profits of the firm Now Meshach did not return the book to its owner He argued that John deserved to suffer for his carelessness in losing it that John ought to have heard his call and that anyhow John would surely inquire for it and might then be allowed to receive it with a few remarks upon the need of a calm demeanour at fires but John never did inquire for it
When William Twemlows will was proved a few weeks later Meshach Myatt made no comment whatever From time to time he heard 44news of Arthur Twemlow that he had set up in New York as an earthenware and glassware factor that he was doing well that he was doing extremely well that his buyer had come over to visit the more aristocratic manufactories at Knype and Cauldon that some one from Bursley had met Arthur at the Leipzig Easter Fair and reported him stout taciturn and Americanised Then one morning in Lord Street Liverpool fifteen years after the death of old Twemlow and the misappropriation of the little book Meshach encountered Arthur Twemlow himself Meshach was returning from his autumn holiday in the Isle of Man and Arthur had just landed from the Servia The two men were mutually impressed by each others skill in nicely conducting an interview which ninetynine people out of a hundred would have botched for they had last met as boy of seventeen and man of forty They lunched richly at the Adelphi and gave news for news Arthurs buyer it seemed was dead and after a day or two in London Arthur was coming to the Five Towns to buy a little in person Meshach inquired about Alice in Australia and was told that things were in a specially bad way with the teablender He said that you couldnt cure a fool and remarked casually upon the smallness of the amount left by 45old Twemlow Arthur unaware that Meshach Myatt was raising up an idea which for fifteen years had been buried but never forgotten in his mind answered with nonchalance that the amount certainly was rather small Arthur added that in his dying letter of forgiveness to Alice the old man had stated that his income from the works during the last years of his life had been less than two hundred per annum Meshach worked his shut thin lips up and down and then began to discuss other matters But as they parted at Lime Street Station the observer of life said to Arthur with presaging calm Youll be i th Five Towns at the end of the week Come and have a cup o tea with me and Hannah on Saturday afternoon The old spot you know it top of Church Street Ive something to show you as ll interest you There was a pause and an interchange of glances Right said Arthur Twemlow Thank you Ill be there at a quarter after four or thereabouts Its like as if what must be Meshach murmured to himself with almost sad resignation in the enigmatic idiom of the Five Towns But he was highly pleased that he the first of all the townsfolk should have seen Arthur Twemlow after twentyfive years absence
When Hannah in silk met the most interest46ing and disconcerting American stranger in the lobby the sound and the smell of Bursley sausage frizzling in the kitchen added a warm finish to her confused welcome She remembered him perfectly Eh Mr Arthur she said I remember you that well And that was all she could say except Now take off your overcoat and do make yourself at home Mr Arthur
I guess I know you said Twemlow touched by the girlish shyness the primeval innocence and the passionate hospitality of the little greyhaired thing
As he took off his glossy blue overcoat and hung it up he seemed to fill the narrow lobby with his large frame and his quiet but penetrating attractive American accent He probably weighed fourteen stone but the elegance of his suit and his boots the cleanshaven chin the fineness of the lines of the nose and the alert eyes set back under the temples redeemed him from grossness He looked under rather than over forty his brown hair was beginning to recede from the forehead but the heavy moustache which entirely hid his mouth and was austerely trimmed at the sides might have aroused the envy of a colonel of hussars
Come in wut1 cried Meshach impatiently 47from the hob come in and lets be pecking a bit and as Arthur and Hannah entered the parlour he added Shes gotten sausages for you She would get em though I told her youd take us as you found us I told her that But women—well you know what they are
1 Wut wilt
Eh Meshach Meshach the old damsel protested sadly and escaped into the kitchen
And when Meshach insisted that the guest should serve out the sausages and Hannah passing his tea said it was a shame to trouble him Twemlow slipped suddenly back into the old life and ways and ideas This existence which he thought he had utterly forgotten returned again and triumphed for a time over all the experiences of his manhood it alone seemed real honest defensible Sensations of his long and restless career in New York flashed through his mind as he impaled Hannahs sausages in the curious parlour—the hysteric industry of his girltypist the continuous hotwater service in the bedroom of his glittering apartment at the Concord House youthful nights at Coster and Bials musichall an insanely extravagant dinner at Sherrys on his thirtieth birthday a difficulty once with an emissary of Pinkerton the incredible plague of flies in summer And during all 48those racing years of clangour and success in New York the life of Bursley selfsufficient and selfcontained had preserved its monotonous and slow stolidity Bursley had become a museum to him he entered it as he might have entered the Middle Ages and was astonished to find that beautiful which once he had deemed sordid and commonplace Some of the streets seemed like a monument of the past a picturesque survival the cratefloats drawn by swift shaggy ponies and driven by men who balanced themselves erect on two thin boards while flying round corners struck him as the quaintest thing in the world
And whats going on nowadays in old Bosley Miss Myatt he asked expansively trying to drop his American accent and use the dialect
Eh bless us exclaimed Hannah startled Nothing ever happens here Mr Arthur
He felt that nothing did happen there
Same here as elsewhere said Meshach People living and getting childer to worry em and dying Nothingll cure em of it seemingly Is there anything different to that in New York Or can they do without cemeteries
Twemlow laughed and again he had the illusion of having come back to reality after a 49long hurried dream Nothing seems to have changed here he remarked idly
Nothing changed said Meshach Nay nay Were up in the world Weve got the steamcar And weve got public baths We wash oursen nowadays And theres talk of a park and a pond with a duck on it Were moving with the times my lad and sos the rates
It gave him pleasure to be called my lad by old Meshach It was piquant to him that the first earthenware factor in New York the Jupiter of a Fourteenth Street office should be addressed as a stripling And where is the park to be he suavely inquired
Up by the railway station opposite your fathers old works as was—its a row of villas now
Well said Twemlow That sounds pretty nice I believe Ill get you to come around with me and show off the sights Say he added suddenly do you remember being on that works one day when my poor father was on to me like half a hundred of bricks and you said The boys all right Mr Twemlow Ive never forgotten that Ive thought of it scores of times
Nay Meshach answered carelessly I remember nothing o that
50Twemlow was dashed by this oblivion It was his memory of the minute incident which more than anything else had encouraged him to respond so cordially to Meshachs advances in Liverpool for he was by no means facile in social intercourse And Meshach had rudely forgotten the affecting scene He felt diminished and saw in the old bachelor a personification of the blunt independent spirit of the Five Towns
Millys late today said Hannah to her brother timorously breaking the silence which ensued
Milly questioned Twemlow
Millicent her proper name is Hannah said quickly but we call her Milly My nephews youngest
Yes of course Twemlow commented when the Myatt familytree had been sketched for him by the united effort of brother and sister I recollect now you told me in Liverpool that Mr Stanway was married Who did he marry
Meshach Myatt pushed back his chair and stood up John catched on to Knights daughter the doctor at Turnhill he said reaching to a cigarcabinet on the sideboard Best thing he ever did in his life Johns among the 51better end of folk now People said it were a comedown for her but Leonora isnt the sort that comes down Shes got blood in her That He snapped his fingers Shes a good bred un Old Knights father came from up York way Ah Shes a cut above Twemlow Stanway is Leonora
Twemlow smiled at this persistence of respect for caste
Have a weed said Meshach offering him a cigar Youll find it all right its a JS Murias Yes he resumed maybe you dont remember old Knights sister as had that far house up at Hillport When she died she left it to Leonora and theyve lived there this dozen year and more
Well I guess shes got a handsome name to her Twemlow remarked perfunctorily rising and leaving Hannah alone at the table
And shes the handsomest woman in the Five Towns that I do know said Meshach as in the grand manner of a connoisseur he lighted his cigar And her was forty day afore yesterday he added with caustic emphasis
Meshach cried Hannah for shame of yourself Then she turned to Twemlow smiling and blushing a little Oughtnt he Eh but Mrs Johns a great favourite of my brothers 52And Im sure her girls are very good and attentive Not a day but one or another of them calls to see me not a day Eh if they missed a day I should think the world was coming to an end And Im expecting Milly today Whats made the dear child so late——
I will say this for John asserted Meshach as though the little housewife had not been speaking I will say this for John he repeated settling himself by the hob He knew how to pick up a d——d fine woman
Meshach Hannah expostulated again
Something in the excellence of Meshachs cigars in his way of calling a woman fine in the dry aloof masculinity of his attitude towards Hannah gave Twemlow to reflect that in the fundamental deeps of experience New York was perhaps not so far ahead of the old Five Towns after all
There was a fluttering in the lobby and Millicent ran into the parlour hurriedly negligently
I cant stay a minute auntie the vivacious girl burst out in the unmistakable accents of condescending pertness and then she caught sight of the welldressed goodlooking man in the corner and her bearing changed as though by a conjuring trick She flushed sensitively 53stroked her blue serge frock composed her immature features to the mask of the finished lady paying a call and summoned every faculty to aid her in looking her best So this chit is the daughter of our admired Leonora thought Twemlow
I suppose you dont remember old Mr Twemlow my dear said Hannah after she had proudly introduced her niece
Oh auntie how silly you are Of course I remember him quite well I really cant stay auntie
Youll stay and drink this cup of tea with me Hannah insisted firmly and Milly was obliged to submit It was not often that the old lady exercised authority but on that afternoon the famous New York visitor was just as much an audience for Hannah as for Hannahs greatniece
Twemlow could think of nothing to say to this pretty pouting creature who had rushed in from a later world and dissipated the atmosphere of mediævalism and so he addressed himself to Meshach upon the eternal subject of the staple trade The women at the table talked quietly but selfconsciously and Twemlow saw Milly forced to taste parkin after three refusals Even while still masticating the viscid unripe parkin 54Milly rose to depart She bent down and dutifully grazed with her lips the cheek of the parkinmaker Goodbye auntie goodbye uncle And in an elegant mincing tone Good afternoon Mr Twemlow
I suppose youve just got to be on time at the next place he said quizzically smiling at her vivid youth in spite of himself Something very important
Oh very important she laughed archly reddening and then was gone and Aunt Hannah followed her to the door
What th old folks lose murmured Meshach apparently to the fire as he put his halfconsumed cigar into a meerschaum holder goes to the profit of young Burgess as is waiting outside the Bank at top o th Square
I see said Twemlow and thought primly that in his day such laxities were not permitted
Hannah and the servant cleared the teatable and the two men were left alone each silently reducing an JS Murias to ashes Meshach seemed to grow smaller in his padded chair by the hob to become torpid and to lose that keen sense of his own astuteness which alone gave zest to his life Arthur stared out of the window at the confined backyard The autumn dusk thickened
55Suddenly Meshach sprang up and lighted the gas and as he adjusted the height of the flame he remarked casually So your sister Alice is as poorly off as ever
Twemlow assented with a nod By the way he said you told me on Wednesday you had something interesting to show me
Meshach made no answer but picked up the poker and struck several times a large pewter platter on the mantelpiece
Do you want anything brother said Hannah hastening into the room
Go up into my bedroom sister and in the lefthand pigeonhole in the bureau youll see a little flat tissuepaper parcel Bring it me Its marked JS
Yes brother and she departed
You said as your father had told your sister as he never got no more than two hundred a year from th partnership after he retired
Yes Twemlow replied Thats what she wrote me In fact she sent me the old chaps letter to read So I reckoned it cost him most all he got to live
Well the old man said and Hannah returned with the parcel which he carefully unwrapped Thatll do sister Hannah disappeared Sithee He mysteriously drew 56Arthurs attention to a little green book whose cover still showed traces of mud and water
And whats this Twemlow asked with assumed lightness
Meshach gave him the history of his adventure at the fire and then laboriously displayed and expounded the contents of the book peering into the yellow pages through the steelrimmed spectacles which he had put on for the purpose
And youve kept it all this time said Twemlow
Ive kept it answered the old man grimly and Twemlow felt that that was precisely what Meshach Myatt might have been expected to do
See said Meshach and their heads were close together thats the year before your fathers death—eight hundred and ninetytwo pounds And year afore that—one thousand two hundred and seven pounds And year afore that—bless us Have I turned oer two pages at once And so he continued
Twemlows heart began to beat heavily as Meshachs eyes met his He seemed to see his father as a pathetic cheated simpleton and to hear the innumerable children of his sister crying for food he remembered that in the old Bursley days he had always distrusted John Stanway that 57conceited fussy imposing young man of twentytwo whom his father had taken into partnership and utterly believed in He forgot that he had hated his father and his mind was obsessed by a sentimental and pure passion for justice
Say Mr Myatt he exclaimed with sudden gruffness do you suggest that John Stanway didnt do my father right
My lad Im doing no suggesting You can keep the book if youve a mind to Ive said nothing to no one and if I had not met you in Liverpool and you hadnt told me that your sister was poorly off again happen I should ha been mum to my grave But thats how things turn out
Hes your own nephew you know said Twemlow
Ay said the old man I know that What by that Fairs fair
Meshachs tone frigidly jocular almost frightened the American
According to you said he determined to put the thing into words your nephew robbed my father each year of sums varying from one to three hundred pounds—thats what it comes to
Nay not according to me—according to that book and what your father told your sister Alice Meshach corrected
58But why should he do it Thats what I want to know
Look here said Meshach quietly resuming his chair Johns as good a man of business as youd meet in a days march But never sin he handled money could he keep off stocks and shares He speculates always has always will And now you know it—and tisnt everybody as does either
Then you think——
Nay my lad I dont said Meshach curtly
But what ought I to do
Meshach cackled in laughter Ask your sister Alice he replied its her as is interested not you You arent in the will
But I dont want to ruin John Stanway Twemlow protested
Ruin John Meshach exclaimed cackling again Not you We mun have no scandals in th family But you can go and see him quietlike I reckon Dost think as Johnll be stuck fast for six or seven hundred or eight hundred Not John And happen a bit of moneyll come in handy to th old parson teablender by all accounts
Suppose my father—made some mistake—forgot
59Ay said Meshach calmly Suppose he did And suppose he didna
I believe Ill go and talk to Stanway said Twemlow putting the book in his pocket Let me see The works is down at Shawport
On th cut2 said Meshach
2 Cut canal
I can say Alice had asked me to look at the accounts Oh Perhaps I can straighten it out neat—— He spoke cheerfully then stopped But its fifteen years ago
Fifteen said Meshach with gravity
Im d——d if I can make you out thought Twemlow as he walked along King Street towards the steamtram for Knype where he was staying at the Five Towns Hotel Hannah had sped him with blushings and rustlings of silk from Meshachs door Im d——d if I can make you out Meshach He said it aloud And yet so complex and selfcontradictory is the mind's action under certain circumstances he could make out Meshach perfectly well he could discern clearly that Meshach had been actuated partly by the love of chicane partly by a quasiinfantile curiosity to see what he should see and partly by an almost biblical sense of justice a sense blind callous cruel
60
CHAPTER III
THE CALL
It was the Trust Anniversary at the Sytch Chapel and two sermons were to be delivered by the Reverend Dr Simon Quain during fifteen years none but he had preached the Trust sermons Even in the morning when pillars of the church were often disinclined to assume the attitude proper to pillars the fane was almost crowded For it was impossible to ignore the Doctor He was an expert geologist a renowned lecturer the friend of men of science and sometimes their foe a contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica and the author of a book of travel He did not belong to the school of divines who annihilated Huxley by asking him from the pulpit to tell them if protoplasm was the origin of all life what was the origin of protoplasm Dr Quain was a man of genuine attainments at which the highest criticism could not sneer and when he visited Bursley the facile agnostics of the town the young and experienced who 61knew more than their elders were forced to take cover Dr Quain whose learning exceeded even theirs—so the elders sarcastically ventured to surmise—was not ashamed to believe in the inspiration of the Old Testament he could reconcile the chronology of the earths crust with the first chapter of Genesis he had a satisfactory explanation of the Johannine gospel and his mere existence was an impregnable fortress from which the adherents of the banner of belief could not be dislodged On this Sunday morning he offered a simple evangelical discourse enhanced by those occasional references to palæozoic and posttertiary periods which were expected from him and which he had enough of the wisdom of the serpent to supply His grave and assured utterances banished all doubts fears misgivings apprehensions and the timid waverers smiled their relief at being freed by the confidence of this illustrious authority from the distasteful exertion of thinking for themselves
The collection was immense and in addition to being immense it provided for the worshippers an agreeable and legitimate excitement of curiosity for the plate usually entrusted to Meshach Myatt was passed from pew to pew and afterwards carried to the communion rails by a complete stranger a man extremely selfpossessed 62and wellattired with a heavy moustache a curious dimple in his chin and melancholy eyes a man obviously of considerable importance somewhere Oh mamma whispered Milly to her mother who was alone with her in the Stanway pew do look thats Mr Twemlow Several men in the congregation knew his identity and one a commercial traveller had met him in New York Before the final hymn was given out half the chapel had pronounced his name in surprise His overt act of assisting in the offertory was favourably regarded it was thought to show a nice social feeling on his part and he did it with such distinction The older people remembered that his father had always been a collector they were constrained now to readjust their ideas concerning the son and these ideas, rooted in the single phrase ran away from home and set fast by time were difficult of adjustment The impressiveness of Dr Quains sermon was impaired by this diversion of interest
The members of the Stanway family in order to avoid the crush in the aisles and portico always remained in their pew after service until the chapel had nearly emptied itself; and today Leonora chose to sit longer than usual John had been too fatigued to rise for breakfast Rose 63was struck down by a sick headache and Ethel had stayed at home to nurse Rose so far as Rose would allow herself to be nursed Leonora felt no desire to hurry back to the somewhat perilous atmosphere of Sunday dinner and moreover she shrank nervously from the possibility of having to make the acquaintance of Mr Twemlow But when she and Milly at length reached the outer vestibule a concourse of people still lingered there and among them Arthur was just bidding goodbye to the Myatts Hannah rather shortsighted did not observe Leonora and Milly Meshach gave them his curt quizzical nod and the aged twain departed Then Millicent proud of her acquaintance with the important stranger and burning to be seen in converse with him left her mothers side and became an independent member of society
How do you do Mr Twemlow she chirped
Ah he replied recognising her with a bow the sufficiency of which intoxicated the young girl Not in such a hurry this morning
Oh no she agreed with smiling effusion and they both glanced with furtive embarrassed swiftness at Leonora Mamma this is Mr Twemlow Mr Twemlow my mother The dashing modish air of the child was adorable 64Having concluded her scene she retired from the centre of the stage in a glow
Arthur Twemlows manner altered at once as he took Leonoras hand and saw the sudden generous miracle which happened in her calm face when she smiled He was impressed by her beautiful maturity by the elegance born of a restrained but powerful instinct transmitted to her through generations of ancestors His respect for Meshach rose higher And she as she faced the self-possessed admiration in Arthurs eyes was conscious of her finished beauty even of the piquancy of the angle of her hat and the smooth immaculate whiteness of her gloves and she was proud too of Millicents gracile restless charm They walked down the steps side by side Leonora in the middle watched curiously from above and below by little knots of people who still lingered in front of the chapel
You soon got to work here Mr Twemlow said Leonora lightly
He laughed I guess you mean that collecting box That was Mr Myatts game He didnt do me right you know He got me into his pew and then put the plate on to me
Leonora liked his Americanism of accent and phrase it seemed romantic to her it seemed to signify the quick alertness the vivacious and 65surprising turns of existence in New York where the unexpected and the extraordinary gave a zest to every day
Well you collected perfectly she remarked
Oh yes you did really Mr Twemlow echoed Millicent
Did I he said accepting the tribute with frank satisfaction I used to collect once at Talmages Church in Brooklyn—youve heard Talmage over here of course He faintly indicated contempt for Talmage And after my first collection he sent for me into the church parlour and he said to me Mr Twemlow next time you collect put some snap into it dont go shuffling along as if you were dead So you see this morning although I havent collected for years I thought of that and tried to put some snap into it
Milly laughed obstreperously Leonora smiled
At the corner they could see Mrs Burgesss carriage waiting at the vestry door in Mount Street The geologist escorted by Harry Burgess got into the carriage where Mrs Burgess already sat Harry followed him and the stately equipage drove off Dr Quain had married a cousin of Mrs Burgesss late husband and he invariably stayed at her house All this had to be explained to Arthur Twemlow who made a 66point of being curious By the time they had reached the top of Oldcastle Street Leonora felt an impulse to ask him without ceremony to walk up to Hillport and have dinner with them She knew that she and Milly were pleasing him and this assurance flattered her But she could not summon the enterprise necessary for such an unusual invitation her lips would not utter the words she could not force them to utter the words
He hesitated as if to leave them and quite automatically without being able to do otherwise Leonora held her hand to bid goodbye he took it with reluctance The moment was passing and she had not even asked him where he was staying she had learnt nothing of the man of whom Meshach had warned her husband to beware
Good morning he said Im very glad to have met you Perhaps——
Wont you come and see us this afternoon if you arent engaged she suggested quickly My husband will be anxious to meet you I know
He appeared to vacillate
Oh do Mr Twemlow urged Milly enchanted
Its very good of you he said I shall be 67delighted to call Its quite a considerable time since I saw Mr Stanway He laughed This was his first reference to John
Im so glad you asked him ma said Milly as they walked down Oldcastle Street
Your father said we must be polite to Mr Twemlow her mother replied coldly
Hes frightfully rich Im sure Milly observed
At dinner Leonora told John that Arthur Twemlow was coming
Oh good he said nothing more
In the afternoon the mother and her eldest and youngest supine and exanimate in the drawingroom were surprised into expectancy by the sound of the frontdoor bell before three oclock
Hes here exclaimed Milly who was sitting near Leonora on the long Chesterfield Ethel her face flushed by the fire lay like a curving wisp of straw in Johns vast armchair Leonora was reading she put down the magazine and glanced briefly at Ethel then at the aspect of the room In silence she wished that Ethels characteristic attitudes could be a little more demure and sophisticated She wondered how often this apparently artless girl had surrepti68tiously seen Fred Ryley since the midnight meeting on Thursday and she was amazed that a child of hers so kindly disposed could be so naughty and deceitful The door opened and Ethel sat up with a bound
Mr Burgess the parlourmaid announced The three women sank back disappointed and yet relieved
Harry Burgess though barely of age was one of the acknowledged dandies of Hillport Slim and fair with a frank rather simple countenance he supported his stylistic apparel with a natural grace that attracted sympathy Just at present he was achieving a spirited effect by always wearing an austere black necktie fastened with a small gold safetypin he wore this necktie for weeks to a bewildering variety of suits and then plunged into a wild polychromatic debauch of neckties Upon all the niceties of masculine dress the details of costume proper to a particular form of industry or recreation or ceremonial he was a genuine authority His cricketing flannels—he was a fine cricketer and lawntennis player of the sinuous oriental sort—were the despair of other dandies and the scorn of the sloven he caused the material before it was made up to be boiled for many hours by the Burgess charwoman under his own superintendence He had extra69ordinary aptitudes for drawing corks lacing boots putting ferrules on walkingsticks opening latched windows from the outside and rolling cigarettes he could make a cigarette with one hand and not another man in the Five Towns it was said could do that His slender convex silver cigarettecase invariably contained the only cigarettes worthy of the palate of a connoisseur as his pipes were invariably the only pipes fit for the combustion of truly highclass tobacco Old women especially charwomen adored him and even municipal seigniors admitted that Harry was a smartlooking youth Fatherless he was the heir to a tolerable fortune the bulk of which during his mothers life he could not touch save with her consent but his mother and his sister seemed to exist chiefly for his convenience His fair hair and his facile smile vanquished them and vanquished most other people also and already when he happened to be crossed there would appear on his winning face the pouting hard resentful lines of the man who has learnt to accept compliance as a right He had small intellectual power and no ambition at all A considerable part of his prospective fortune was invested in the admirable shares of the Birmingham Sheffield and District Bank and it pleased him to sit on a stool in the Bursley branch of this 70bank since he wanted pro tempore a dignified avocation without either the anxieties of trade or the competitive tests of a profession He was a beautiful bank clerk but he had once thrown a bundle of cheques into the office fire while aiming at a basket on the mantelpiece the whole banking world would have been agitated and disorganised had not another clerk snatched the bundle from peril at the expense of his own fingers the incident still legendary behind the counter of the establishment at the top of St Lukes Square kept Harry awake to the seriousness of life for several weeks
Well Harry said Leonora with languid good nature He paid his homage in form to the mistress of the house raised his eyebrows at Milly who returned the gesture smiled upon Ethel who feebly waved a hand as if too exhausted to do more and then sat down on the pianostool carefully easing the strain on his trousers at the knees and exposing an inch of fine wool socks above his American boots He was a familiar of the house and had had the unconditional entrée since he and the Stanway girls first went to the High Schools at Oldcastle
I hope I havent disturbed your beauty sleep—any of you was his opening remark
Yes you have said Ethel
71He continued I just came in to seek a little temporary relief from the excellent Quain Quain at breakfast Quain at chapel Quain at dinner I got him to slumber on one side of the hearth and mother on the other and then I slipped away in case they awoke If they do Ive told Cissie to say that Ive gone out to take a tract to a sick friend—back in five minutes
Oh Harry you are silly Millicent laughed Every one including the narrator was amused by this elaborate fiction of the managing of those two impressive persons Mrs Burgess and the venerable Christian geologist by a kind indulgent bored Harry Leonora who had resumed her magazine looked up and smiled the guarded smile of the mother
Im afraid youre getting worse she murmured and his candid seductive face told her that while he was on no account not to be regarded as a gay dog and a sad dog and a worldly dog yet nevertheless he and she thoroughly appreciated and understood each other She did indeed like him and she found pleasure in his presence he gratified the eye
I wish youd sing something Milly he began again after a pause
No said Milly Im not going to sing now
72But do Cant she Mrs Stanway
Well what do you want me to sing
Sing Love is a plaintive song out of the second act
Harry was the newly appointed secretary of the Bursley Amateur Operatic Society of which both Ethel and Millicent were members In a few weeks time the Society was to render Patience in the Town Hall for the benefit of local charities and rehearsals were occurring frequently
Oh Im not Patience Milly objected stiffly she was only Ella Besides I maynt may I mamma
Your father might not like it said Leonora
The dad has taken Bran out for a walk so it wont trouble him Ethel interjected sleepily under her breath
Well but look here Mrs Stanway said Harry conclusively the organist at the Wesleyan chapel actually plays the sextet from Patience for a voluntary What about that If theres no harm in that—— Leonora surrendered Come on Mill he commanded I shall have to return to my muttons directly and he opened the piano
But I tell you Im not Patience
Come on You know the music all right 73Then well try Ellas bit in the first act Ill play
Millicent arose shook her hair and walked to the piano with the mien of a prima donna who has the capitals of Europe at her feet exultant in her youth her charm her voice revelling unconsciously in the vivacity of her blood and consciously in her power over Harry which Harry strove in vain to conceal under an assumed equanimity
And as Millicent sang the ballad Leonora was beguiled by her singing into a mood of vague but overpowering melancholy It seemed tragic that that fresh and pure voice that innocent vanity and that untested selfconfidence should change and fade as maturity succeeded adolescence and decay succeeded maturity it seemed intolerable that the ineffable charm of the girls youth must be slowly filched away by the thefts of time I was like that once And Jack too she thought as she gazed absently at the pair in front of the piano And it appeared incredible to her that she was the mother of that tall womanly creature that the little morsel of a child which she had borne one night had become a daughter of Eve with a magic to mesmerise errant glances and desires She had a glimpse of the significance of Nature's eternal iterance Then her mood developed a bitterness against Millicent 74She thought cruelly that Millicents magic was no part of the girls soul no talent acquired by loving exertion but something extrinsic unavoidable and unmeritorious Why was it so Why should fate treat Milly like a godchild Why should she have prettiness and adorableness and the lyric gift and such abounding confident youth Why should circumstances fall out so that she could meet her unacknowledged lover openly at all seasons Leonoras eyes wandered to the figure of Ethel reclining with shut eyes in the armchair Ethel in her graver and more diffident beauty had already begun to taste the sadness of the world Ethel might not stand victoriously by her lover in the midst of the drawingroom nor joyously flip his ear when he struck a wrong note on the piano Ethel far more passionate than the active Milly could only dream of her lover and see him by stealth Leonora grieved for Ethel and envied her too for her dreams and for her solitude assuaged by clandestine trysts Those trysts lay heavy on Leonoras mind although she had discovered them she had done nothing to prevent them from day to day she had put off the definite parental act of censure and interdiction She was appalled by the serene duplicity of her girls Yet what could she say Words were so trivial 75so conventional And though she objected to the match wishing with ardour that Ethel might marry far more brilliantly she believed as fully in the honest warm kindliness of Fred Ryley as in that of Ethel And what else matters after all she tried to think Her reverie shifted to Rose unfortunate Rose victim of peculiar ambitions of a weak digestion and of a harsh temperament that repelled the sympathy it craved but was too proud to invite She felt that she ought to go upstairs and talk to the prostrate Rose in the curt matterof-fact tone that Rose ostensibly preferred but she did not wish to talk to Rose Ah well she reflected finally with an inward sigh as though to whisper the last word and free herself of this preoccupation they will all be as old as me one day
Mr Twemlow said the parlourmaid
Milly deliberately lengthened a high full note and then stopped and turned towards the door
Bravo Arthur Twemlow answered at once the challenge of her whole figure but he seemed to ignore the fact that he had caused an interruption and there was something in his voice that piqued the cantatrice something that sent her back to the days of short frocks She glanced nervously aside at Harry who had struck a few notes and then dropped his hands from the key76board Twemlows demeanour towards the blushing Ethel when Leonora brought her forward was much more decorous and simple As for Harry to whom his arrival was a surprise at first rather annoying Twemlow treated the young buck as one man of the world should treat another and Harrys private verdict upon him was extremely favourable Nevertheless Leonora noticed that the three young ones seemed now to shrink into themselves to become passive instead of active and by a common instinct to assume the character of mere spectators
May I choose this place said Twemlow and sat down by Leonora in the other corner of the Chesterfield and looked round She could see that he was admiring the spacious room and herself in her beautiful afternoon dress and the pensive and the sprightly comeliness of her daughters His wandering eyes returned to hers and their appreciation pleased her and increased her charm
I am expecting my husband every minute she said
Papas gone out for a walk with Bran Milly added
Oh Bran He repeated the word in a voice that humorously appealed for further elucidation and both Ethel and Harry laughed
77The St Bernard you know Milly explained annoyed
I wouldnt be surprised if that was a St Bernard out there he said pointing to the French window What a fine fellow And what a fine garden
Bran was to be seen nosing low down at the window and alternately lifting two huge white paws in his futile anxiety to enter the room
Then I dare say John is in the garden Leonora exclaimed with sudden animation glad to be able to dismiss the faint uneasy suspicion which had begun to form in her mind that John meant after all to avoid Arthur Twemlow Would you like to look at the garden she demanded half rising and lifting her brows to a pretty invitation
Very much indeed he replied and he jumped up with the impulsiveness of a boy
Its quite warm she said and thanked Harry for opening the window for them
A fine severe garden he remarked enthusiastically outside after he had descanted to Bran on Brans amazing perfections and the dog had greeted his mistress A fine severe garden he repeated
Yes she said lifting her skirt to cross the lawn I know what you mean I wouldnt 78have it altered for anything but many people think its too formal My husband does
Why Its just English And that old wall and the yew trees I tell you——
She expanded once more to his appreciation which she took to herself for none but she and the gardener who was also the groom and worked under her was responsible for the garden But as she displayed the African marigolds and the late roses and the hardy outdoor chrysanthemums and as she patted Bran who dawdled under her hand she looked furtively about for John She hoped he might be at the stables and when in their tour of the grounds they reached the stables and he was not there she hoped they would find him in the drawingroom on their return Her suspicion reasserted itself, and it was strengthened against her reason by the fact that Arthur Twemlow made no comment on Johns invisibility In the dusk of the spruce stable where an enamelled nameplate over the manger of a loose box announced that Prince was its pampered tenant she opened the cornbin and entering the loosebox offered the cob a handful of crushed oats And when she stood by the cob Twemlow looking through the grill of the door at this picture which suggested a beasttamer in the cage she was aware of her 79beauty and the beauty of the animal as he curved his neck to her jewelled hand and of the ravishing effect of an elegant woman seen in a stable She smiled proudly and yet sadly at Twemlow who was pulling his heavy moustache Then they could hear an ungoverned burst of Millys light laughter from the drawingroom and presently Milly resumed her interrupted song Opposite the outer door of the stable was the window of the kitchen whence issued like an undertone to the song the subdued rattle of cups and saucers and the glow of the kitchen fire could be distinguished And over all this complex domestic organism attractive and efficient in its every manifestation and vigorously alive now in the smooth calm of the English Sunday she was queen and hers was the brain that ruled it while feigning an aloof quiescence He is a romantic man he understands all that she felt with the certainty of intuition. Aloud she said she must fasten up the dog
When they returned to the drawingroom there was no sign of John
Hasnt your father come in she asked Ethel in a low voice Milly was still singing
No mother I thought he was with you in the garden The girl seemed to respond to Leonoras inquietude
80Milly finished her song and Twemlow who had stationed himself behind her to look at the music nodded an austere approval
You have an excellent voice he remarked and you can use it To Leonora this judgment seemed weighty and decisive
Mr Twemlow said the girl smiling her satisfaction excuse me asking but are you married
No he answered are you
Mr Twemlow she giggled and turning to Ethel who in anticipation blushed once again There I told you
You girls are very curious Leonora said perfunctorily
Bessy came in and set a Moorish stool before the Chesterfield on the stool an inlaid Sheraton tray with china and a copper kettle droning over a lamp and near it a cakestand in three storeys And Leonora manoeuvring her bangles commenced the ritual of refection with Harry as acolyte If he doesnt come—well he doesnt come she thought of her husband as she smiled interrogatively at Arthur Twemlow holding a lump of sugar aloft in the tongs
The Reverend Simon Quain asked who you were at dinner today said Harry During the absence of Leonora and her guest Harry 81had evidently acquired information concerning Arthur
Oh Mr Twemlow Milly appealed quickly do tell Harry and Ethel what Dr Talmage said to you I think its so funny—I cant do the accent
What accent he laughed
She hesitated caught Yours she replied boldly
Very amusing Harry said judicially after the episode of the Brooklyn collection had been related Talmage must be a caution I suppose youre staying at the Five Towns Hotel he inquired with an implication in his voice that there was no other hotel in the district fit for the patronage of a man of the world Twemlow nodded
What At Knype Leonora exclaimed Then where did you dine today
I had dinner at the Tiger and not a bad dinner either he said
Oh dear Harry murmured indicating an august sympathy for Arthur Twemlow in affliction
If I had only known—I dont know what I was thinking of not to ask you to come here for dinner said Leonora I made sure you would be engaged somewhere
82Fancy you eating all alone at the Tiger on Sunday too remarked Milly
Tut tut Twemlow protested with a farcical exactness of pronunciation and Ethel laughed
What are you laughing at my dear Leonora asked mildly
I dont know mother—really I dont Whereupon they all laughed together and a state of absolute intimacy was established
I hadnt the least notion of being at Bursley today Twemlow explained But I thought that Knype wasnt much of a place—I always did think that being a native of Bursley I wouldnt be surprised if youve noticed Mrs Stanway how all the five Five Towns kind of sit and sniff at each other Well I felt dull after breakfast and when I saw the advertisement of Dr Quain at the old chapel I came right away And thats all except that Im going to sup with a man at Knype tonight
There were sounds in the hall and the door of the drawingroom opened but it was only Bessie coming to light the gas
Is that your master just come in Leonora asked her
Yes maam
At last said Leonora and they waited 83With noiseless precision Bessie lit the gas made the fire drew the curtains and departed Then they could hear Johns heavy footsteps overhead
Leonora began nervously to talk about Rose and Twemlow showed a polite interest in Roses private trials Ethel said that she had just visited the patient who slept Harry asseverated that to remain a moment longer away from his mothers house would mean utter ruin for him and with extraordinary suddenness he made his adieux and went followed to the front door by Millicent The conversation in the room dwindled to disconnected remarks and was kept alive by a series of separate little efforts Footsteps were no longer audible overhead The clock on the mantelpiece struck five emphasising a silence and amid growing constraint several minutes passed Leonora wanted to suggest that John having lost the dog must have been delayed by looking for him but she felt that she could not infuse sufficient conviction into the remark and so said nothing A thousand fears and misgivings took possession of her and not for the first time she seemed to discern in the gloom of the future some great catastrophe which would swallow up all that was precious to her
At length John came in hurried fidgetty nervous and Ethel slipped out of the room
84Ah Twemlow he broke forth how dye do How dye do Glad to see you Hadnt given me up had you How dye do
Not quite said Twemlow gravely as they shook hands
Leonora took the waterjug from the tray and went to a chrysanthemum in the farthest corner of the room where she remained listening and pretending to be busy with the plant The men talked freely but vapidly with the most careful politeness and it seemed to her that Twemlow was annoyed while Stanway was determined to offer no explanation of his absence from tea Once in a pause John turned to Leonora and said that he had been upstairs to see Rose Leonora was surprised at the change in Twemlows demeanour It was as though the pair were fighting a duel and Twemlow wore a coat of mail And these two have not seen each other for twentyfive years she thought And they talk like this She knew then that something lay between them she could tell from a peculiar wellknown look in her husbands eyes
When she summoned decision to approach them where they stood side by side on the hearthrug both tall big formal and preoccupied Twemlow at once said that unfortunately he must 85go Stanway made none but the merest perfunctory attempt to detain him He thanked Leonora stiffly for her hospitality and said goodbye with scarcely a smile But as John opened the door for him to pass out he turned to glance at her and smiled brightly kindly bowing a final adieu to which she responded She who never in her life till then had condescended to such a device softly stepped to the unlatched door and listened
This one yours she heard John say and then the sound of a hat bouncing on the tiled floor
My fault entirely said Twemlows voice By the way I guess I can see you at your office one day soon
Yes certainly John answered with false glib lightness What about Some business
Well yes—business drawled Twemlow
They walked away towards the outer hall and she heard no more except the indistinct murmur of a sudden brief dialogue between the visitor and the two girls who must have come in from the garden Then the front door banged heavily He was gone The vast and arid tedium of her life closed in upon her again she seemed to exist in a colourless void peopled only by ominous dim elusive shapes of disaster
86But as involuntarily she clenched her hands the formidable thought swept through her brain that Arthur Twemlow was not so calm nor so impassive nor so set apart but that her spell over him if she chose to exert it might be a shield to the devious man her husband
87
CHAPTER IV
AN INTIMACY
Does father really mean it about me going to the works tomorrow Ethel asked that night
I suppose so my dear replied Leonora and she added You must do all you can to help him
Ethels clear gift of interpreting even the most delicate modulations in her mothers voice instantly gave her the first faint sense of alarm
Why mamma what do you mean
What I say dear Leonora murmured with neutral calm You must do all you can to help him We look on you as a woman now
You dont you dont Ethel thought passionately as she went upstairs And you never will Never
The profound instinctive sympathy which existed between her mother and herself was continually being disturbed by the manifest insincerity of that assertion contained in Leonoras last sentence The girl was in arms without knowing 88it against a whole order of things She could scarcely speak to Millicent in the bedroom She was disgusted with her father and she was disgusted with Leonora for pretending that her father was sagacious and benevolent for not admitting that he was merely a trial to be endured She was disgusted with Fred Ryley because he was not as other young men were—Harry Burgess for instance The startling hint from Leonora that perhaps all was not well at the works exasperated her She held the works in abhorrence With her sisters she had always regarded the works as a vague something which John Stanway went to and came away from as the mysterious source of food raiment warmth But she was utterly ignorant of its mechanism and she wished to remain ignorant That its mechanism should be in danger of breaking down that it should even creak was to her at first less a disaster than a matter for resentment She hated the works as one is sometimes capable of unreasonably hating a benefactor
On Monday morning rising a little earlier than usual she was surprised to find her mother alone at a disordered breakfasttable
Has dad finished his breakfast already she inquired determined to be cheerful Sleep and her fundamental goodnature had modified her 89mood and for the moment she meant to play the rôle of dutiful daughter as well as she could
He has had to go off to Manchester by the first train said Leonora Hell be away all day So you wont begin till tomorrow She smiled gravely
Oh good Ethel exclaimed with intense momentary relief
But now again in Leonoras voice and in her eye there was the soft warning which Ethel seized and which without a relevant word spoken she communicated to her sisters John Stanways young women began to reflect apprehensively upon the sudden irregularities of his recent movements his conferences with his lawyer his bluffing air a hundred trifles too insignificant for separate notice collected themselves together and became formidable A certain atmosphere of forced and false cheerfulness spread through the house
Not gone to bed said Stanway briskly when he returned home by the late train and discovered his three girls in the drawingroom They allowed him to imagine that his jaunty air deceived them they were jaunty too but all the while they read his soul and pitied him with the intolerable condescension of youth towards age
90The next day Ethel had a further reprieve of several hours for Stanway said that he must go over to Hanbridge in the morning and would come back to Hillport for dinner and escort Ethel to the works immediately afterwards None asked a question but everyone knew that he could only be going to Hanbridge to consult with David Dain This time the programme was in fact executed At two oclock Ethel found herself in her fathers office
As she took off her hat and jacket in the hard sinister room she looked like a violet roughly transplanted and bidden to blossom in the mire She knew that amid that environment she could be nothing but incapable dull stupid futile and plain She knew that she had no brains to comprehend and no energy to prevail Every detail repelled her—the absence of fireirons in the hearth the business almanacs on the discoloured walls the great flat tabledesk the dusty samples of teapots in the window the vast green safe in the corner the glimpses of industrial squalor in the yard the sound of uncouth voices from the clerks office the muffled beat of machinery under the floor and the strange uninhabited useless appearance of a small room seen through a halfopen door near the safe She would have given a year of life in that first moment to be helping 91her mother in some despised monotonous household task at Hillport
She felt that she was being outrageously deprived of a natural right hitherto enjoyed without let to have the golden fruits of labour brought to her in discreet silence as to their origin
Stanway struck a bell with determination and the manager appeared a tall thin sandyhaired man of middle age who wore a grey tailedcoat and a white apron
Ha Mayer That you
Yes sir Good afternoon miss
Good afternoon Ethel simpered foolishly and she had it in her to have slain both men because she felt such a silly schoolgirl
I wanted Ryley Where is he
Hes somewhere on the bank3 sir—speaking to the mouldmaker I think
3Bank earthenware manufactory But here the word is used in a limited sense meaning the industrial as distinguished from the bureaucratic part of the manufactory
Well just bring me in that letter from Paris that came on Saturday will you Stanway requested
Ive several things to speak to you about said Mr Mayer when he had brought the letter
Directly Stanway answered waving him away and then turning to Ethel Now young 92lady I want this letter translating He placed it before her on the table together with some blank paper
Yes father she said humbly
Three hours a week for seven years she had sat in front of French manuals at the school at Oldcastle but she knew that even if the destiny of nations turned on it she could not translate that letter of ten lines Nevertheless she was bound to make a pretence of doing so
I dont think I can without a dictionary she plaintively murmured after a few minutes
Oh Heres a French dictionary he replied producing one from a drawer much to her chagrin she had hoped that he would not have a dictionary
Then Stanway began to look through a pile of correspondence and to scribble in a large saffroncoloured diary He went out to Mr Mayer Mr Mayer came in to him they called to each other from room to room The machinery stopped beneath and started again A horse fell down in the yard and Stanway watching from the window exclaimed Tsh That carter
Various persons unceremoniously entered and asked questions all of which Stanway answered with equal dryness and certainty At intervals he poked the fire with an old walkingstick 93Ethel never glanced up In a dream she handled the dictionary the letter the blank paper and wrote unfinished phrases with the thick office pen
Done it he inquired at last
I—I—cant make out the figures she stammered Is that a 5 or a 7 She pushed the letter across
Oh Thats a French 7 he replied and proceeded to make shots at the meaning of sentences with a flair far surpassing her own skill though it was notorious that he knew no French whatever She had a sudden perception of his cleverness his capacity his force his mysterious hold on all kinds of things which eluded her grasp and dismayed her
Lets see what youve done he demanded She sighed in despair hesitating to give up the paper
Mr Twemlow by appointment announced a clerk and Arthur Twemlow walked into the office
Hallo Twemlow said Stanway meeting him gaily I was just expecting you My new confidential clerk Eh He pointed to Ethel who flushed to advantage Youve plenty of them over there havent you—girlclerks
94Twemlow assented and remarked that he himself employed a lady secretary
Yes Stanway eagerly went on Thats what I mean to do I mean to buy a typewriter and Miss shall learn shorthand and typewriting
Ethel was astounded at the glibness of invention which could instantly bring forth such an idea She felt quite sure that until that moment her father had had no plan at all in regard to her attendance at the office
Im sure I cant learn she said with genuine modesty and as she spoke she became very attractive to Twemlow who said nothing but smiled at her sympathetically protectively She returned the smile By a swift miracle the violet was back again in its native bed
You can go in there and finish your work we shall disturb you said her father pointing to the little empty room and she meekly disappeared with the letter the dictionary and the piece of paper
Well hows business Twemlow By the way have a cigar
Ethel at the dusty table in the little room could just see her fathers broad back through the door which in her nervousness she had forgotten to 95close She felt that the door ought to have been latched but she could not find courage deliberately to get up and latch it now
Thanks said Arthur Twemlow Business is going right along
She heard the striking of a match and the pleasant twang of cigarsmoke greeted her nostrils The two men seemed splendidly masculine important selfsufficient The triviality of feminine atoms like herself Rose and Millicent occurred to her almost as a new fact and she was ashamed of her existence
Buying much this trip asked Stanway
Not much and not your sort said Twemlow The truth is Im fixing up a branch in London
But my dear fellow surely theres no American business done through London in English goods
No perhaps not said Twemlow But that dont say there isnt going to be Besides Ive got a notion of coming in for a share of your colonial shipping trade And let me tell you theres a lot of business done through London between the United States and the Continent in glass and fancy goods
Oh yes I know there is Stanway conceded And so you think youre going to teach the old country a thing or two
96That depends
On what
On whether the old countrys made up her mind yet to sit down and learn He laughed
Ethel saw by the change of colour in her fathers neck that the susceptibilities of his patriotism had been assailed
What do you mean Stanway asked pugnaciously
I mean that you are falling behind here said Twemlow with cold nonchalant firmness Every one knows that Youre getting left Look how youre being cut out in cheap toilet stuff In ten years you wont be shipping a hundred dollars worth per annum of cheap toilet to the States
But listen Twemlow said Stanway impressively
Twemlow continued imperturbable You in the Five Towns stick to oldfashioned methods You cant cut it fine enough
Oldfashioned Not cut it fine enough Stanway exclaimed rising
Twemlow laughed with real mirth Yes he said
Give me one instance—one instance cried Stanway
Well said Twemlow take firing I hear 97you still pay your firemen by the oven and your placers by the day instead of settling all ovenwork by scorage
Tell me about that—the Trenton system Id like to hear about that Its been mentioned once or twice said Stanway resuming his chair
Mentioned
Ethel perceived vaguely that the forceful man who held her in the hollow of his hand had met more than his match Over that spectacle she rejoiced like a small child but at the same time Arthur Twemlows absolute conviction that the Five Towns was losing ground frightened her made her feel that life was earnest and stirred faint longings for the serious way It seemed to her that she was weighed down by knowledge of the world whereas gay Millicent and Rose with her silly examinations She plunged again into the actuality of the letter from Paris
I called really to speak to you about my fathers estate
Ethel was startled into attention by the sudden careful politeness in Arthur Twemlows manner and by a quivering in his voice
What of it said Stanway Ive forgotten all the details Fifteen years since you know
Yes But its on behalf of my sister and I havent been over before Besides it wasnt till 98she heard I was coming to England that she—asked me
Well said Stanway Of course I was the sole executor and its my duty——
Thats it Twemlow broke in Thats what makes it a little awkward No ones got the right to go behind you as executor But the fact is my sister—we—my sister was surprised at the smallness of the estate We want to know what he did with his money that is how much he really received before he died Perhaps you wont mind letting me look at the annual balancesheets of the old firm say for 1875 6 and 7 You see——
Twemlow stopped as Stanway halfturned to look at the door between the two rooms
Go on go on said Stanway in his grandiose manner Thats all right
Ethel knew in a flash that her father would have given a great deal to have had the door shut and equally that nothing on earth would have induced him to shut it
Thats all right he repeated Go on
Twemlows voice regained steadiness You can perhaps understand my sisters feelings Then a long pause Naturally if you dont care to show me the balancesheets——
My dear Twemlow said John stiffly I 99shall be delighted to show you anything you wish to see
I only want to know——
Certainly certainly Quite justifiable and proper Ill have them looked up
Any time will do
Well were rather busy Say a week today—if youre to be here that long
I guess thatll suit me said Twemlow
His tone had a touch of cynical cruel patience
The intangible and shapeless suspicions which Ethel had caught from Leonora took a misty form and substance only to be immediately dispelled in that inconstant mind by the sudden refreshing sound of Millys voice Weve called to take Ethel home papa—oh mother heres Mr Twemlow
In another moment the office was full of chatter and scent and Milly had run impulsively to Ethel What has father given you to do
Oh dear Ethel sighed with a fatigued gesture of knowing nothing whatever
Its halfpast five said Leonora glancing into the inner room after she had spoken to Mr Twemlow
Three hours and a half had Ethel been in thrall It was like a century to her She could have dropped into her mothers arms
100What have you come in Nora asked Stanway the trap
No the fourwheeled dogcart dear
Well Twemlow drive up and have tea with us Come along and have a Five Towns hightea
Oh Mr Twemlow do said Milly nearly drowning Leonoras murmured invitation
Arthur hesitated
Come along Stanway insisted genially Of course you will
Thank you was the rather feeble answer But I shall have to leave pretty early
Well see about that said Stanway You can take Mr Twemlow and the girls Nora and Ill follow as quick as I can I must dictate a letter or two
The three women Twemlow in the midst escaped like a pretty cloud out of the rude dingy office and their bright voices echoed diminuendo down the stair Stanway rang his bell fiercely The dictionary and the letter and Ethels paper lay forgotten on the dusty table of the inner room
Arthur Twemlow felt that he ought to have been annoyed but he could do no more than keep up a certain reserve of manner Neither 101the memory of his humiliating clumsy lies about his sister in broaching the matter of his fathers estate to Stanway nor his clear perception that Stanway was a dishonest and a frightened man nor his strong theoretical objection to Stanways tactics in so urgently inviting him to tea could overpower the sensation of spiritual comfort and complacency which possessed him as he sat between Leonora and Ethel at Leonoras splendidly laden table He fought doggedly against this sensation He tried to assume the attitude of a philosopher observing humanity of a spider watching flies he tried to be critical cold aloof He listened as one set apart and answered in monosyllables But despite his own volition the monosyllables were accompanied by a smile that destroyed the effect of their curtness The intimate charm of the domesticity subdued his logical antipathies He knew that he was making a good impression among these women that for them there was something romantic and exciting about his history and personality And he liked them all He liked even Rose so pale strange and contentious In regard to Milly whom he had begun by despising he silently admitted that a girl so vivacious supple sparkling and pretty had the right to be as pertly foolish as she chose He took a direct fancy to Ethel And he decided 102once for ever that Leonora was a magnificent creature
In the play of conversation on domestic trifles the most ordinary phrases seemed to him to be charged with a peculiar fascination The little discussions about Millys attempts at housekeeping about the austere exertions of Rose Ethels first day at the office Brans new biscuits the end of the lawntennis season the propriety of hockey for girls were so mysteriously pleasant to his ears that he felt it a sort of privilege to have been admitted to them And yet he clearly perceived the shortcomings of each person in this little world of which the totality was so delightful He knew that Ethel was languidly futile Rose cantankerous Milly inane Stanway himself crafty and meretricious and Leonora often supine when she should not be He dwelt specially on the more odious aspects of Stanways character and swore that had Stanway forty womenfolk instead of four he Arthur Twemlow should still do his obvious duty of finishing what he had begun In chatting with his host after tea he marked his own attitude with much care and though Stanway pretended not to observe it he knew that Stanway observed it well enough
The three girls disappeared and returned in street attire Rose was going to the science 103classes at the Wedgwood Institution Ethel and Millicent to the rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic Society Again in this distribution of the complex family energy there reappeared the suggestion of a mysterious domestic charm
Dont be late tonight said Stanway severely to Millicent
Now grumbler retorted the intrepid child putting her gloved hand suddenly over her fathers mouth Stanway submitted The picture of the two in this delicious momentary contact remained long in Twemlows mind and he thought that Stanway could not be such a brute after all
Play something for us Nora said the august paterfamilias spreading at ease in his chair in the drawingroom when the girls were gone Leonora removed her bangles and began to play The Bees Wedding But she had not proceeded far before Milly ran in again
A note from Mr Dain pa
Milly had vanished in an instant and Leonora continued to play as if nothing had happened but Arthur was conscious of a change in the atmosphere as Stanway opened the letter and read it
I must just go over the way and speak to a neighbour said Stanway carelessly when Leonora 104had struck the final chord Youll excuse me I know Shant be long
Dont mention it Arthur replied with politeness and then after Stanway had gone leaving the door open he turned to Leonora at the piano and said Do play something else
Instead of answering she rose resumed her jewellery and took the chair which Stanway had left She smiled invitingly evasively inscrutably at her guest
Tell me about American women she said Ive always wanted to know
He thought her attitude in the great chair the most enchanting thing he had ever seen
Leonora had watched Twemlows demeanour from the moment when she met him in her husbands office She had guessed but not certainly that it was still inimical at least to John and the exact words of Uncle Meshachs warning had recurred to her time after time as she met his reluctant cautious eyes Nevertheless it was by the sudden uprush of an instinct rather than by a calculated design that she in her home and surrounded by her daughters began the process of enmeshing him in the web of influences which she spun ceaselessly from the bright threads of her own individuality Her mind had food 105for sombre preoccupation—the lost battle with Milly during the day about Millys comicopera housekeeping the tale told by Johns nervous effusive guilty manner and especially the episode of the letter from Dain and Johns disappearance these things were grave enough to the mother and wife But they receded like negligible trifles into the distance as she rose so suddenly and with such a radiant impulse from the piano In the new enterprise of consciously arousing the sympathy of a man she had almost forgotten even the desperate motive which had decided her to undertake it should she get the chance
Tell me about American women she said All her person was a challenge And then Would you mind shutting the door after Jack She followed him with her gaze as he crossed and recrossed the room
What about American women he said dropping all his previous reserve like a garment What do you want to know
Ive never seen one I want to know what makes them so charming
The fresh desirous interest in her voice flattered him and he smiled his content
Oh he drawled leaning back in his chair which faced hers by the fire I never noticed 106they were so specially charming Some of them are pretty nice I expect but most of the young ones put on too much lugs at any rate for an Englishman
But theyre always marrying Englishmen So how do you explain that I did think youd be able to tell me about the American women
Perhaps I havent met enough of just the right sort he said
Youre too critical she remarked as though his case was a peculiarly interesting one and she was studying it on its merits
You only say that because Im over forty and unmarried Mrs Stanway Im not at all critical
Over forty she exclaimed and left a pause He nodded But you are too critical she went on It isnt that women dont interest you—they do——
I should think they did he murmured gratified
But you expect too much from them
Look here he said how do you know
She smiled with an assumption of the sadness of all knowledge she made him feel like a boy again If you didnt expect too much from them you would have married long ago It isnt as if you hadnt seen the world
107Seen the world he repeated Ive never seen anything half so charming as your home Mrs Stanway
Both were extremely well satisfied with the course of the conversation Both wished that the interview might last for indefinite hours for they had slipped as into a socket into the supreme topic and into intimacy They were happy and they knew it The egotism of each tingled sensitively with eager joy They felt that this was life one of the justifications of existence
She shook her head slowly
Yes he continued its you who stay quietly at home that are to be envied
And you a free bachelor say that Why I should have thought——
Thats just it Youre quite wrong if youll let me say so Here am I a free bachelor as you call it Can do what I like Go where I like And yet I would sell my soul for a home like this Something you know No you dont People say that women understand men and what men feel but they cant—they cant
No said Leonora seriously I dont think they can—still I have a notion of what you mean She spoke with modest sympathy
Have you he questioned
She nodded For a fraction of an instant she 108thought of her husband stolid with all his impulsiveness over at David Dains
People say to me Why dont you get married Twemlow went on drawn by the subtle invitation of her manner But how can I get married I cant get married by taking thought They make me tired I ask them sometimes whether they imagine I keep single for the fun of the thing Do you know that Ive never yet been in love—no not the least bit
He presented her with this fact as with a jewel and she so accepted it
What a pity she said gently
Yes its a pity he admitted But look here Thats the worst of me When I get talking about myself Im likely to become a bore
Offering him the cigarette cabinet she breathed the old effective sincere answer Not at all its very interesting
Let me see this house belongs to you doesnt it he said in a different casual tone as he lighted a cigarette
Shortly afterwards he departed John had not returned from Dains but Twemlow said that he could not possibly stay as he had an appointment at Hanbridge He shook hands with restrained ardour Her last words to him were Im so sorry my husband isnt back and 109even these ordinary words struck him as a beautiful phrase Alone in the drawingroom she sighed happily and examined herself in the large glass over the mantelpiece The shaded lights left her loveliness unimpaired and yet as she gazed at the mirror the worm gnawing at the root of her happiness was not her husbands precarious situation nor his deviousness nor even his mere existence but the one thought Oh That I were young again
Mother whatever do you think cried Millicent running in eagerly in advance of Ethel at ten oclock Lucy Turners sister died today and so she cant sing in the opera and I am to have her part if I can learn it in three weeks
What is her part Leonora asked as though waking up
Why mother you know Patience of course Isnt it splendid
Where are father and Mr Twemlow Ethel inquired falling into a chair
110
CHAPTER V
THE CHANCE
Leonora was aware that she had tamed one of the lions which menaced her husbands path she could not conceive that Arthur Twemlow whatever his mysterious power over John would find himself able to exercise it now Twemlow was a friend of hers and so disarmed She wished to say proudly to John I neither know nor wish to know the nature of the situation between you and Arthur Twemlow But be at ease He is no longer dangerous I have arranged it The thing was impossible to be said she was bound to leave John in ignorance she might not even hint Nevertheless Leonoras satisfaction in this triumph her pleasure in the mere memory of the intimate talk by the fire her innocent joyous desire to see Twemlow again soon emanated from her in various subtle ways and the household was thereby soothed back into a feeling of security about John Leonora 111ignored perhaps deliberately that Stanway had still before him the peril of financial embarrassment that he was mortgaging the house and that his colloquies with David Dain continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting When she saw him nervous petulant preoccupied she attributed his condition solely to his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed She had a strange determined impulse to be happy and gay
An episode at an extra Monday night rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic Society seemed to point to the prevalence of certain sinister rumours about Stanways condition Milly inspired by dreams of the future had learnt her part perfectly in five days She sang and acted with magnificent assurance and with a vivid theatrical charm which awoke enthusiasm in the excitable breasts of the male chorus Harry Burgess lost his air of fatigued worldliness and went round naïvely demanding to be told whether he had not predicted this miracle Even the conductor was somewhat moved
Shell do by gad said that man of few illusions to his crony the accompanist
But it is not to be imagined that such a cardinal event as the elevation of a chit like Millicent Stanway to the principal rôle could 112achieve itself without much friction and consequent heat Many ladies of the chorus thought that the committee no longer deserved the confidence of the society At least three suspected that the conductor had a private spite against themselves And one aged thirtyfive felt convinced that she was the victim of an elaborate and scandalous plot To this maid had been offered Millys old part of Ella it was a final insult—but she accepted it In the scene with Angela and Bunthorne in the first act the new Ella made the same mistake three times at the words In a doleful train and the conductor grew sarcastic
May I show you how that bit goes Miss Gardner said Milly afterwards with exquisite pertness
No thank you Milly was the freezing emphasised answer I dare say I shall be able to manage without your assistance
Oh ho sang Milly delighted to have provoked this exhibition and she began a sort of Carmen dance of disdain
Girls grow up so quick nowadays Miss Gardner exclaimed losing control of herself who are you I should like to know and she proceeded with her irrelevant inquiries whos your father Doesnt every one know that hell 113have gone smash before the night of the show She was shaking insensate brutal
Millicent stood still and went very white
Miss Gardner
Miss Stanway
The rival divas faced each other murderous for a few seconds and then Milly turned laughing to Harry Burgess who consciously secretarial was standing near with several others
Either Miss Gardner apologises to me at once she said lightly at once or else either she or I leave the Society
Milly tapped her foot hummed and looked up into Miss Gardners eyes with serene contempt Ethel was not the only one who was amazed at the absolute certitude of victory in little Millicents demeanour Harry Burgess spoke apart with the conductor upon this astonishing contretemps and while he did so Milly still smiling hummed rather more loudly the very phrase of Ellas at which Miss Gardner had stumbled It was a masterpiece of insolence
We think Miss Gardner should withdraw the expression said Harry after he had coughed
Never said Miss Gardner Goodbye all
Thus ended Miss Gardners long career as an operatic artist—and not without pathos 114for the ageing woman sobbed as she left the room from which she had been driven by a pitiless child
According to custom Harry Burgess set out from the National School where the rehearsals were held with Ethel and Milly for Hillport But at the bottom of Church Street Ethel silently fell behind and joined a fourth figure which had approached The two couples walked separately to Hillport by the fieldpath As Harry and Milly opened the wicket at the foot of Stanways long garden Ethel ran up alone again
That you cried a thin voice under the trees by the gate It was Rose taking late exercise after her studies
Yes its us replied Harry Shall you give me a whisky if I come in
And he entered the house with the three girls
Im certain Rose saw you with Fred in the field and if she did shes sure to split to mother Milly whispered as she and Ethel ran upstairs They could hear Harry already strumming on the piano
I dont care said Ethel callously exasperated by three days of futility at the office and by the manifest injustice of fate
115My dear I want to speak to you said Leonora to Ethel when the informal supper was over and Harry had buckishly departed and Rose and Milly were already gone upstairs Not a word had been mentioned as to the great episode of the rehearsal
Well mother Ethel answered in a tone of weary defiance
Leonora still sat at the suppertable awaiting John who was out at a meeting Ethel stood leaning against the mantelpiece like a boy
How often have you been seeing Fred Ryley lately Leonora began with a gentle pacific inquiry
I see him every day at the works mother
I dont mean at the works you know that Ethel
I suppose Rose has been telling you things
Rose told me quite innocently that she happened to see Fred in the field tonight
Oh yes Ethel sneered with cold irony I know Roses innocence
My dear girl Leonora tried to reason with her Why will you talk like that You know you promised your father——
No I didnt ma Ethel interrupted her sharply Milly did I never promised father anything
116Leonora was astonished at the mutinous desperation in Ethels tone It left her at a loss
I shall have to tell your father she said sadly
Well of course mother Ethel managed her voice carefully You tell him everything
No I dont my dear Leonora denied the charge like a girl A week last night I heard Fred Ryley talking to you at your window And I have said nothing
Ethel flushed hotly at this disclosure
Then why say anything now she murmured half daunted and half daring
Your father must know I ought to have told him before But I have been wondering how best to act
Whats the matter with Fred mother Ethel demanded with a catch in her throat
That isnt the point Ethel Your father has distinctly said that he wont permit any—she stopped because she could not bring herself to say the words and then continued If he had the slightest suspicion that there was anything between you and Fred Ryley he would never have allowed you to go to the works at all
Allowed me to go I like that mother 117As if I wanted to go to the works I simply hate the place—father knows that And yet—and yet—— She almost wept
Your father must be obeyed Leonora stated simply
Suppose Fred is poor Ethel ran on recovering herself Perhaps he wont be poor always And perhaps we shant be rich always The things that people are saying—— She hesitated afraid to proceed
What do you mean dear
Well the girl exclaimed and then gave a brief account of the Gardner incident
My child was Leonoras placid comment you ought to know that Florence Gardner will say anything when she is in a temper She is the worst gossip in Bursley I only hope Milly wasnt rude And really this has got nothing to do with what we are talking about
Mother Ethel cried hysterically why are you always so calm Just imagine yourself in my place—with Fred You say Im a woman and I am I am though you dont think so truly Just imagine—— No you cant Youve forgotten all that sort of thing mother She burst into gushing tears at last Father can kill me if he likes I dont care
She fled out of the room
118So Ive forgotten have I Leonora said to herself smiling faintly as she sat alone at the table waiting for John
She was not at all hurt by Ethels impassioned taunt but rather amused indulgently amused that the girl should have so misread her She felt more maternal protective and tender towards Ethel than she had ever felt since the first year of Ethels existence She seemed perfectly to comprehend and she nobly excused the sudden outbreak of violence and disrespect on the part of her languid softeyed daughter She thought with confidence that all would come right in the end and vaguely she determined that in some undefined way she would help Ethel would yet demonstrate to this child of hers that she understood and sympathised The interview which had just terminated futile conflicting desultory muddled tentative and abrupt as life itself appeared to her in the light of a positive achievement She was not unhappy about it nor about anything Even the scathing speech of Florence Gardner had failed to disturb her
I want to tell you something Jack she began when her husband at length came home
Whos been drinking whisky was Stanways only reply as he glanced at the table
119Harry brought the girls home I dare say he had some I didnt notice she said
Hm Stanway muttered gloomily hes young enough to start that game
Ill see it isnt offered to him again if you like said Leonora But I want to tell you something Jack
Well He was thoughtlessly cutting a piece of cheese into small squares with the silver butterknife
Only you must promise not to say a word to a soul
I shall promise no such thing he said with uncompromising bluntness
She smiled charmingly upon him Oh yes Jack you will you must
He seemed to be taken unawares by her sudden smile Very well he said gruffly
She then told him in the manner she thought best of the relations between Ethel and Fred Ryley and she pointed out to him that if he had reflected at all upon the relations between Harry Burgess and Millicent he would not have fallen into the error of connecting Milly instead of her sister with Fred
What relations between Milly and young Burgess he questioned stolidly
Why Jack she said you know as much 120as I do Why does Harry come here so often
Hed better not come here so often Whats Milly Shes nothing but a child
Leonora made no attempt to argue with him As for Ethel she said softly shes at a difficult age and you must be careful——
As for Ethel he interrupted Ill turn Fred Ryley out of my office tomorrow
She tried to look grave and sympathetic to use all her tact But wont that make difficulties with Uncle Meshach And people might say you had dismissed him because Uncle Meshach had altered his will
D——n Fred Ryley he swore unable to reply to this D——n him
He walked to and fro in the room and all his secret profound resentment against Ryley surged up loose and uncontrolled
Wouldnt it be better to take Ethel away from the works Leonora suggested
No he answered doggedly Not for a moment Cant I have my own daughter in my own office because Fred Ryley is on the place A pretty thing
It is awkward she admitted as if admitting also that what puzzled his sagacity was of course too much for hers
121Fred Ryley he repeated the hateful syllables bitterly And I only took him out of kindness Simply out of kindness I tell you what Leonora He faced her in a sort of bravado It would serve em d——n well right if Uncle Meshach died tomorrow and Aunt Hannah the day after I should be safe then It would serve them d——n well right all of em—Ryley and Uncle Meshach yes and Aunt Hannah too She hasnt altered her will but shed no business to have let uncle alter his Theyre all in it Shes bound to die first and they know it Well well He was a resigned martyr now and he turned towards the hearth
Jack she exclaimed whats the matter
Ruins the matter he said Thats whats the matter Ruin
He laughed sourly undecided whether to pretend that he was not quite serious or to divulge his real condition
Her calm confident eyes silently invited him to relieve his mind and he could not resist the temptation
You know that mortgage on the house he said quickly I got it all arranged at once Dain was to have sent the deed in last Tuesday night for you to sign but he sent in a letter instead 122Thats why I had to go over and see him There was some confounded hitch at the last moment a flaw in the title——
A flaw in the title It was the phrase only that alarmed her
Oh Its all right said Stanway wondering angrily why women should always by the trick of seizing on trifles destroy the true perspective of a business affair The titles all right at least it will be put right But it means delay and I cant wait I must have money at once in three days Can you understand that my girl
By an effort she conquered the impulses to ask why and why and why and to suggest economy in the house Something came to her mysteriously out of her memory of her own fathers affairs a sudden inspiration and she said
Cant you deposit my deeds at the bank and get a temporary advance She was very proud of this clever suggestion
He shook his head No the bank wont
The fact was that the bank had long been pressing him to deposit security for his overdraft
I tell you what might be done he said brightening as her idea gave birth to another one in his mind Uncle Meshach might lend some 123money on the deeds You shall go down tomorrow morning and ask him Nora
Me She was scared at this result
Yes you he insisted full of eagerness Its your house Ask him to let you have five hundred on the house for a short while Tell him we want it You can get round him easily enough
Jack I cant do it really
Oh yes you can he assured her No one better He likes you He doesnt like me—never did Ask him for five hundred No ask him for a thousand May as well make it a thousand Itll be all the same to him You go down in the morning and do it for me
Stanways animation became quite cheerful
But about the title—the flaw she feebly questioned
That wont frighten uncle said Stanway positively He knows the title is good enough Thats only a technical detail
Very well she agreed Ill do what I can Jack
Thats good he said
And even now the resolve once made she did not lose her sense of tranquil optimism her mild happiness her widespreading benevolence The result of this talk with John aroused in her 124an innocent vanity for was it not indirectly due to herself that John had been able to see a way out of his difficulties
They soon afterwards dismissed the subject put it with care away in a corner and John finished his supper
Is Mr Twemlow still in the district she asked vivaciously
Yes said John and there was a pause
Youre doing some business together arent you Jack she hazarded
John hesitated No he said he only wanted to see me about old Twemlows estate—some details he was after
I felt it she mused I felt all the time it was that that was wrong And John is worrying over it But he neednt—he neednt—and he doesnt know
She exulted
She could read plainly the duplicity in his face She knew that he had done some wicked thing and that all his life was a maze of more or less equivocal stratagems But she was so used to the character of her husband that this aspect of the situation scarcely impressed her It was her new active beneficent interference in Johns affairs that seemed to occupy her thoughts
125I told you I wouldnt say anything about Ethels affair said John later and I wont He was once more judicial and pompous But of course you will look after it I shall leave it to you to deal with Youll have to be firm you know
Yes she said
Not till after breakfast the next day did Leonora realise the utter repugnance with which she shrank from the mission to Uncle Meshach She had declined to look the project fairly in the face to examine her own feelings concerning it She had said to herself when she awoke in the dark It is nothing It is a mere business matter It isnt like begging But the idea the absurd indefensible idea of its similarity to begging was precisely what troubled her as the moment approached for setting forth She pondered too upon the intolerable fact that such a request as she was about to prefer to Uncle Meshach was a tacit admission that John with all his ostentations had at last come to the end of the tether She felt that she was a living part of Johns meretriciousness She had the fancy that she should have dressed for the occasion in rusty black Was it not somehow shameful that she a suppliant for financial aid should outrage 126the ugly modesty of the little parlour in Church Street by the arrogant and expensive perfection of her beautiful skirt and street attire
Moreover she would fail
The morning was fine and with infantile pusillanimity she began to hope that Uncle Meshach would be taking his walks abroad In order to give him every chance of being out she delayed her departure upon one domestic excuse or another for quite half an hour How silly I am she reflected But she could not help it and when she had started down the hill towards Bursley she felt sick She had a suspicion that her feet might of their own accord turn into a byroad and lead her away from Uncle Meshachs I shall never get there she exclaimed She called at the fishmongers in Oldcastle Street and was delighted because the shop was full of customers and she had to wait At last she was crossing St Lukes Square and could distinguish Uncle Meshachs doorway with its antique fanlight She wished to stop to turn back to run but her traitorous feet were inexorable They carried her an unwilling victim to the house Uncle Meshach by some strange accident was standing at the window and saw her Ah she thought if he had not been at the window if he had not caught sight of me I should have 127walked past And that chance of escape seemed like a lost bliss
Uncle Meshach himself opened the door
Come in lass he said looking her up and down through his glasses Youre the prettiest thing Ive seen since I saw ye last Your aunts out with the servant too and Im left here same as a dog on the chain Thats how they leave me
She was thankful that Aunt Hannah was out that made the affair simpler
Well uncle she said I havent seen you since you came back from the Isle of Man have I
Some inspiration lent her a courage which rose far beyond embarrassment She saw at once that the old man was enchanted to have her in the house alone and flattered by the apparatus of feminine elegance which she always displayed for him at its fullest These two had a sort of cult for each other a secret sympathy none the less sincere because it seldom found expression His pale blue eyes warmed by her presence said Im an old man and Ive seen the world and I keep a few of my ideas to myself But you know that no one understands a pretty woman better than I do A glance is enough And in reply to this challenge she gave the rein 128to her profoundest instincts She played the simple feminine to his masculine She dared to be the eternal beauty who rules men and will ever rule them they know not why
My lass he said in a tone that granted all requests in advance after they had talked a while youre after something
His wrinkled features ironic but benevolent intimated that he knew she wished to take an unfair advantage of the gifts which Nature had bestowed on her and that he did not object
She allowed herself to smile mysteriously provocatively at him
Yes she admitted frankly I am
Well He waited indulgently for the disclosure
She paused a moment smiling steadily at him The contrast of his wizened age made her feel deliciously girlish
Its about my house at Hillport she began with assurance I want you——
And she told him with no more than a sufficiency of detail what she wanted She did not try to conceal that the aim was to help John that in crude fact it was John who needed the money But she emphasised my house and I want you to lend me The thing was well done and she knew it was well done and felt satisfied 129accordingly As for Meshach he was decidedly caught unawares He might perhaps have suspected from the beginning that she was only an emissary of Johns but the form and magnitude of her proposal were a violent surprise to him He hesitated She could see clearly that he sought reasons by which to justify himself in acquiescence
Its your affair he questioned meditatively
Quite my own she assured him
Let me see——
I shall get it she said to herself and she was astounded at the felicitous event of the enterprise She could scarcely believe her good luck but she knew beyond any doubt that she was not mistaken in the signs of Meshachs demeanour She thought she might even venture to ask him for an explanation of his warning letter about Arthur Twemlow
At that moment Aunt Hannah and the middleaged servant reentered the house and the servant had to pass through the parlour to reach the kitchen The atmosphere which Meshach and Leonora had evolved in solitude from their respective individualities was dissipated instantly The parlour became nothing but the parlour with its glass partition its antimacassars its Meshach by the hob and its diminutive 130Hannah uttering fatuous affectionate exclamations of pleasure
Leonoras heart was pierced by a sudden stab of doubt as she waited for the result
Sister said Meshach what dost think Heres your nephew been speculating in stocks and shares till he cant hardly turn round——
Uncle Leonora exclaimed horrified I never said such a thing
Sh said Hannah in an awful whisper as she shut the kitchen door
Till he cant hardly turn round Meshach continued and now he wants Leonora here to mortgage her house to get him out of his difficulties Havent I always told you as John would find himself in a rare fix one of these days
Few human beings could dominate another more completely than Meshach dominated his sister But here for Leonoras undoing was just a case where without knowing it Hannah influenced her brother He had a reputation to keep up with Hannah a great and terrible reputation and in several ways a loan by him through Leonora to John would have damaged it A few minutes later and he would have been committed both to the loan and to the demonstration of his own consistency in the humble eyes of 131Hannah but the old spinster had arrived too soon The spell was broken Meshach perceived the danger of his position and retired
Nay nay Hannah protested Thats very wrong of John Eh this speculation
But really uncle Leonora said as convincingly as she could Its capital that John wants
She saw that all was lost
Capital Meshach sarcastically flouted the word and he turned with a dubious benevolence to Leonora No my lass it isnt he said pausing Johnll get out of this mess as hes gotten out of many another Trust him Hes your husband and hes in the family and Im saying nothing against him But trust him for that
No Hannah inserted Johns always been a good nephew If it wasnt——
Meshach quelled her and proceeded Ill none consent to John raising money on your property Its not right lass Happen thisll be a lesson to him if anything will be
Five hundred would do Leonora murmured with mad foolishness
Of what use to chronicle the dreadful shame which she endured before she could leave the house she who for a quarter of an hour had been a queen 132there and who left as the pitied wife of a wastrel nephew
Youre not short my dear Hannah asked at the end in an anxious voice
Not he Uncle Meshach testily ejaculated fastening the button of that droll necktie of his
Oh dear no said Leonora with such dignity as she could assume
As she walked home she wondered what speculation really was She could not have defined the word She possessed but a vague idea of its meaning She had long apprehended ignorantly and indifferently and uneasily that John was in the habit of tampering with dangerous things called stocks and shares But never before had the vital import of these secret transactions been revealed to her The dramatic swiftness of the revelation stunned her and yet it seemed after all that she only knew now what she had always known
When she reached home John was already in the hall taking off his overcoat though the hour of one had not struck Was this a coincidence or had he been unable to control his desire to learn what she had done
In silence she smiled plaintively at him shaking her head
133What do you mean he asked harshly
I couldnt arrange it she said Uncle Meshach refused
John gave a scarcely perceptible start Oh That he exclaimed Thats all right Ive fixed it up
This morning
Eh Yes this morning
During dinner he showed a certain careless amiability
You neednt go to the works any more today he said to Ethel
To celebrate this unexpected halfholiday Ethel and Millicent decided that they would try to collect a scratch team for some hockey practice in the meadow
And mother you must come said Millicent Youll make one more anyway
Yes John agreed it will do your mother good
He will never know and never guess and never care what I have been through she thought
Before leaving for the works John helped the girls to choose some sticks
When he reached his office the first thing he did was to build up a good fire Next he looked 134into the safe Then he rang the bell and Fred Ryley responded to the summons
This family connection whom he both hated and trusted was a rather thickset very neatly dressed man of twentythree who had been mature serious and responsible for eight years His fair grave face with its short thin beard showed plainly his leading qualities of industry order conscientiousness and doggedness It showed too his mild benevolence Ryley was never late never neglectful never wrong he never wasted an hour either of his own or his employers time And yet his colleagues liked him perhaps because he was unobtrusive and goodnatured At the beginning of each year he laid down a programme for himself and he was incapable of swerving from it Already he had acquired a thorough knowledge of both the manufacturing and the business sides of earthenware manufacture and also he was one of the few men at that period who had systematically studied the chemistry of potting He could not fail to get on and to win universal respect His chances of a truly striking success would have been greater had he possessed imagination humour or any sort of personal distinction In appearance he was common insignificant to be appreciated he wanted knowing but he 135was extremely sensitive and proud and he could resent an affront like a Gascon He had apparently no humour whatever The sole spark of romance in him had been fanned into a small steady flame by his passion for Ethel Ryley was a man who could only love once for all
Did you find that private ledger for me out of the old safe Stanway demanded
Yes said Ryley and I put it in your safe at the front and gave you the key back this morning
I dont see it there Stanway retorted
Shall I look Ryley suggested quietly approaching the safe of which the key was in the lock
Never mind now Never mind now Stanway stopped him I dont want to be bothered now Later on in the afternoon before Mr Twemlow comes Did you write and ask him to call at four thirty
Yes said Ryley departing without a sign on his face the model clerk
Fool whispered Stanway It would have been impossible for Ryley to breathe without irritating his employer and the fact that his plebeian cousins son was probably the most reliable underling to be got in the Five Towns did not in the slightest degree lessen Stanways dislike of him it increased it
136Stanway had been perfectly aware that the little ledger was in his safe and as soon as Ryley had shut the door he jumped up unlatched the safe removed the book and after tearing it in two stuck first one half and then the other into the midst of the fire
That ends it anyhow he thought when the leaves were consumed
Then he selected some books of cheque counterfoils a number of prospectuses of companies some share certificates exasperating relic of what rich dreams and a lot of letters All these he burnt with much neatness and care putting more coal on the fire so as to hide every trace of their destruction Then he opened a drawer in the desk and took out a revolver which he unloaded and loaded again
Im pretty cool he flattered himself
He was the sort of flamboyant man who keeps a loaded revolver in obedience to the theory that a loaded revolver is a necessary and proper part of the true males outfit like a gold watch and chain a gold pencil case a razor for every day in the week and a cigarholder with a bit of good amber to it He had owned that revolver for years with no thought of utilising the weapon But in justice to him it must be said that when any of his contemporaries—Titus 137Price for instance—had made use of revolvers or ropes in a particular way he had always secretly justified and commended them
He put the revolver in his hippocket the correct location and donned his works hat He did not reflect Memories of his past life did not occur to him nor visions of that which was to come He did not feel solemn On the contrary he felt cross with everyone and determined to pay everyone out in particular he was vexed in a mean childish way with Uncle Meshach and with himself for having fancied for a moment that an appeal to Uncle Meshach could be successful One other idea struck him forcibly by reason of its strangeness namely that the works was proceeding exactly as usual raw material always coming in finished goods always going out the various shops hot and murmurous with toil money tinkling in the petty cashbox the very engine beneath his floor beating its customary monotonous stroke and his comfortable home was proceeding exactly as usual the man hissing about the stable yard the servants discreetly moving in the immaculate kitchens Leonora elegant with sovereigns in her purse the girls chattering and restless not a single outward sign of disaster and yet he was at the end absolutely at the end at last There 138was going to be a magnificent and unparalleled sensation in the town of Bursley He seemed for an instant dimly to perceive ways or incomplete portions of ways by which he might still escape Then with a brusque gesture he dismissed such futile scheming and yielded anew to the impulse which had suddenly and piquantly seized him three hours before when Leonora said Uncle Meshach wont and he replied Ive fixed it up His dilemma was too complicated No one not even Dain was aware of its intricacies Dain knew a lot Leonora a little and sundry other persons odd fragments But he himself could scarcely have drawn the outlines of the whole sinister situation without much reference to books and correspondence No he had finished He was bored and he was irritable The impulse hurried him on
In half an hour that ass Twemlow will be here he thought looking at the office dial over the mantelpiece
And then he left his room calling out to the clerks room as he passed Just going on to the bank I shall be back in a minute or two
At the southwestern corner of the works was a disused enamelkiln which had been built experimentally and had proved a failure He walked through the yard crept with some 139difficulty into the kiln and closed the iron door A pale silver light came down the open chimney He had decided as he crossed the yard that he should place the mouth of the revolver between his eyes so that he had nothing to do in the kiln but to put it there and touch the trigger The idea of this simple action preoccupied him Yes he reflected taking the revolver from his pocket that is where I must put it and then just touch the trigger He thought neither of his family nor of his sins nor of the grand fiasco but solely of this physical action Then as he raised the revolver the fear troubled him that he had not burnt a particular letter from a Jew in London received on the previous day Of course I burnt it he assured himself Did I though He felt that a mysterious volition over which he had no control would force him to return to his office in order to make sure He gave a weary curse at the prospect of having to put back the revolver leave the kiln enter the kiln again and once more raise the revolver
As he passed by the archway near the packing house the afternoon postman appeared and gave him a letter Without thinking he halted on the spot and opened it It was written in haste and ran My Dear Stanway—I am called away to London and may have to sail for New York at 140once Sorry to have to break the appointment We must leave that affair over In any case it could only be a mere matter of form As I told you I was simply acting on behalf of my sister My kindest regards to your wife and your daughters Believe me yours very truly—ARTHUR TWEMLOW
He read the letter a second time in his office standing up against the shut door Then his eye wandered to the desk and he saw that an envelope had been placed with mathematical exactitude in the middle of his blottingpad Ryley he thought This other letter was marked private and as the envelope said John Stanway Esq without an address it must have been brought by special messenger It was from David Dain and stated that the difficulty as to the title of the house had been settled that the mortgage would be sent in for Mrs Stanway to sign that night and that Stanway might safely draw against the money tomorrow
My God he exclaimed pushing his hat back from his brow What a chance
In five minutes he was drawing cheques and simultaneously planning how to get over the disappearance of the old private ledger in case Twemlow should after all at some future date ask to see original documents
141What a chance The thought ran round and round in his brain
As he left the works by the canal side he paused under Shawport Bridge and furtively dropped the revolver into the water Thats done with he murmured
He saw now that his preparations for departure which at the moment he had deemed to be so well designed and so effective were after all ridiculous No amount of combustion could have prevented the disclosure at an inquest of the ignominious facts
During tea he laughed loudly at Millys descriptions of the hockey match which had been a great success Leonora had kept goal with distinction and admitted that she rather enjoyed the game
So it is arranged said Leonora with a hint of involuntary surprise when he handed her the mortgage to sign
Didnt I tell you so this morning he answered loftily There is always a despicable joy in resuscitating a lie which events have changed into a truth
He insisted on retiring early that night In the bedroom he remarked Your friend Twemlows had to go to London today and may return 142straight from there to New York I had a note from him He sent you his kindest regards and all that sort of thing
Then we maynt see him again she said delicately fingering her hair in front of the pierglass
143
CHAPTER VI
COMIC OPERA
Early one evening a few weeks later Leonora half attired for the gala night of the operatic performance was again delicately fingering her hair in that large bedroom whose mirrors daily reflected the leisured process of her toilette Her black skirt trimmed with yellow made a sudden sharp contrast with the pale tints of her corset and her long bare arms The bodice lay like a trifling fragment on the bluegreen eiderdown of her bed a pair of satin shoes glistened in front of the fire and two chairs bore the discarded finery of the day The dressingtable was littered with silver and ivory A faint and charming odour of violets mingled mysteriously with the warmth of the fire as Leonora moved away from the pierglass between the two curtained windows where the light was centred and with accustomed hands picked up the bodice apparently so frail that a touch might have ruined it
144The door was brusquely opened and some one entered
Not dressed Rose said Leonora a little startled We ought to be going in ten minutes
Oh mother I mustnt go I mustnt really
The tall slightlystooping girl with her flat figure her plain shabby serge frock her tired white face and the sinister glance of the idealist in her great fretful eyes seemed to stand there and accuse the whole of Leonoras existence Utterly absorbed in the imminent examination her brain a welter of sterile facts Rose found all the seriousness of life in dates irregular participles algebraic symbols chemical formulas the altitudes of mountains and the areas of inland seas To the cruelty of the too earnest enthusiast she added the cruelty of youth and it was with a merciless justice that she judged everyone with whom she came into opposition
But my dear youll be ill if you keep on like this And you know what your father said
Rose smiled bitterly superior at the misguided creature whose horizons were bounded by domesticity on one side and by dress on the other
I shall not be ill mother she said firmly sniffing at the scent in the room I cant help it I must work at my chemistry again tonight 145Father knows perfectly well that chemistry is my weak point I must work I just came in to tell you
She departed slowly as it were daring her mother to protest further
Leonora sighed overpowered by a feeling of impotence What could she do what could any person do when challenged by an individuality at once so harsh and so impassioned She finished her toilette with minute care but she had lost her pleasure in it The sense of the contrariety of things deepened in her She looked round the circle of her environment and saw hope and gladness nowhere Johns affairs were perhaps running more smoothly but who could tell The shameful fact that the house was mortgaged remained always with her And she was intimately conscious of a soilure a moral stain as the result of her recent contacts with the man of business in her husband Why had she not been able to keep femininely aloof from those puzzling and repellent matters ignorant of them innocent of them And Ethel too Twelve days of the office had culminated for Ethel in a slight illness which Doctor Hawley described as lack of tone Her father had said airily that she must resume her clerkship in due season but the entire household well knew that she would not do so and that the 146experiment was one of the failures which invariably followed Johns interference in domestic concerns As for Millys housekeeping it was an admitted absurdity Millicent had lived of late solely for the opera and John resented any preoccupation which detached the girls interest from their home When Ethel recovered in the nick of time to attend the final rehearsals he grew sarcastic and irrelevantly made cutting remarks about the letter from Paris which Ethel had never translated and which she thought he had forgotten Finally he said he probably could not go to the opera at all and that at best he might look in at it for half an hour He was careful to disclaim all interest in the performance
Carpenter had driven the two girls to the Town Hall at seven oclock and at a quarter to eight he returned to fetch his mistress Enveloped in her fur cloak Leonora climbed silently into the cart
I did hear said Carpenter respectfully gossiping as Mr Twemlow was gone back to America but I seed him yesterday as I was coming back from taking the mester to that there manufacturers meeting at Knype Wonderful like his mother he is mum
Oh indeed said Leonora
Her first impatient querulous thought was 147that she would have preferred Mr Twemlow to be in America
The illuminated windows of the Town Hall and the knot of excited people at the principal portico gave her a sort of preliminary intimation that the eternal quest for romance was still active on earth though she might have abandoned it In the corridor she met Uncle Meshach wearing an antique frockcoat His eye caught hers with quiet satisfaction There was no sign in his wrinkled face of their last interview
Your aunts not very well he answered her inquiry She wasnt equal to coming she said I bid her go to bed So Im all alone
Come and sit by me Leonora suggested I have two spare tickets
Nay I think not he faintly protested
Yes do she said you must
As his trembling thin hands stole away her cloak disclosing the perfection and dark magnificence of her toilette and as she perceived in his features the admiration of a connoisseur and in the eyes of other women envy and astonishment she began to forget her despondencies She lived again She believed again in the possibility of joy And perhaps it was not strange that her thought travelled at once to Ethel—Ethel whom she had not questioned further about her lover 148Ethel whom till then she had figured as the wretched victim of love but whom now she saw wistfully as loves elect
The front seats of the auditorium were filled with all that was dashing and much that was solidly serious in Bursley Hoarded wealth whose religion was spotless kitchens and cash down sat side by side with flightiness and the habit of living by credit on rather more than ones income The members of the Society had exerted themselves in advance to impress upon the public mind that the entertainment would be nothing if not fashionable and brilliant and they had succeeded There was not a single young man and scarcely an old one but wore eveningdress and the frocks of the women made a garden of radiant blossoms Supreme among the eminent dandies who acted as stewards in that part of the house was Harry Burgess straight out of Conduit Street W with a mien plainly indicating that every reserved seat had been sold two days before From the second seats the sterling middle classes half envy and half disdain examined the glittering ostentation in front of them they had no illusions concerning it their knowledge of financial realities was exact Up in the gloom of the balcony the crowded faces of 149the unimportant and the obscure rose tier above tier to the organloft Here was Florence Gardner come incognito to deride here was Fred Ryley thief of an evenings time and here were sundry dressmakers who experienced the thrill of the creative artist as they gazed at their confections below
The entire audience was nervous critical and excited partly because nearly every unit of it boasted a relative or an intimate friend in the Society and partly because as an entity representing the town it had the trepidations natural to a mother who is about to hear her child say a piece at a party It hoped but it feared If any outsider had remarked that the youthful Bursley Operatic Society could not expect even to approach the achievements of its remarkable elder sister at Hanbridge the audience would have chafed under that invidious suggestion Nevertheless it could not believe that its native talent would be really worth hearing And yet rumours of a surprising excellence were afloat The excitement was intensified by the tuning of instruments in the orchestra by certain preliminary experiments of a too anxious gasman and most of all by a delay in beginning
At length the Mayor entered alone the interesting absence of the Mayoress had some 150connection with a silver cradle that day ordered from Birmingham as a civic gift
Well Burgess the Mayor whispered benevolently what sort of a show are we to have
You will see Mr Mayor said Harry whose confident smile expressed the spirit of the Society
Then the conductor—the man to whom twenty instrumentalists and thirty singers looked for guidance help encouragement and the nullifying of mistakes otherwise disastrous the man on whose nerve and animating enthusiasm depended the reputation of the Society and of Bursley—tapped his baton and stilled the chatter of the audience with a glance The footlights went up the lights of the chandelier went down and almost before any one was aware of the fact the overture had commenced There could be no withdrawal now the die was cast the boats were burnt In the artistic history of Bursley a decisive moment had arrived
In a very few seconds people began to realise slowly timidly but surely that after all they were listening to a real orchestra The mere volume of sound startled them the verve and decision of the players filled them with confidence the bright grace of the wellknown airs laid them 151under a spell They looked diffidently at each other as if to say This is not so bad you know And when the finale was reached with its prodigious succession of crescendos and its irresistible melody somehow swimming strongly through a wild sea of tone the audience forgot its pose of critical aloofness and became unaffectedly human The last three bars of the overture were smothered in applause
The conductor as pale as though he had seen a ghost turned and bowed stiffly Put that in your pipe and smoke it his unrelaxing features said to the audience and also If you have ever heard the thing better played in the Five Towns be good enough to inform me where
There was a hesitation the brief murmur of a hidden voice and the curtains of the fitup stage swung apart and disclosed the roseate environs of Castle Bunthorne ornamented by those famous maidens who were dying for love of its æsthetic owner The audience made no attempt to grasp the situation of the characters until it had satisfactorily settled the private identity of each That done it applied itself to the sympathetic comprehension of the feelings of a dozen young women who appeared to spend their whole existence in statuesque poses and 152plaintive but nonsensical lyricism It failed honestly and even when the action descended from song to banal dialogue it was not reassured Silly was the unspoken epithet on a hundred tongues despite the delicate persuasion of the music the virginal charm of the maidens and the illuminated richness of costumes and scene The audience understood as little of the operatic convention as of the æstheticism caricatured in the roseate environs of Castle Bunthorne A number of people present had never been in a theatre either for lack of opportunity or from a moral objection to theatres Many others who seldom missed a melodrama at the Hanbridge Theatre Royal avoided operas by virtue of the infallible instinct which caused them to recoil from anything exotic enough to disturb the calm of their lifelong mental lethargy As for the minority which was accustomed to opera including the still smaller minority which had seen Patience itself, it assumed the right that evening critically to examine the convention anew to reconsider it unintimidated by the crushing prestige of the Savoy or of DOyly Cartes No 1 Touring Company And for the most part it found in the convention small basis of common sense
Then Patience appeared on the eminence 153She was a dairymaid and she could not understand the philosophy prevalent in the roseate environs of Castle Bunthorne The audience hailed her with joy and relief The dairymaid and her costume were pretty in a familiar way which it could appreciate She was extremely young adorably impudent airy tripping and supple as a circusrider She had marvellous confidence We are friends are we not you and I her gestures seemed to say to the audience And with the utmost complacency she gazed at herself in the eyes of the audience as in a mirror Her opening song renewed the triumph of the overture It was recognisably a ballad and depended on nothing external for its effectiveness It gave the bewildered listeners something to take hold of and in return for this gift they acclaimed and continued to acclaim Milly glanced coolly at the conductor who winked back his permission and the next moment the Bursley Operatic Society tasted the delight of its first encore The pert fascinations of the heroine the bravery of the Colonel and his guards the clowning of Bunthorne combined with the continuous seduction of the music and the scene very quickly induced the audience to accept without reserve this amazing intrigue of logical absurdities which was being unrolled before it The opera 154ceased to appear preposterous the convention had won and the audience had lost Small slips in delivery were unnoticed big ones condoned and nervousness encouraged to depart The performance became a homogeneous whole in which the excellence of the best far more than atoned for the clumsy mediocrity of the worst When the curtains fell amid storms of applause and cut off the stage the audience perceived suddenly like a revelation that the young men and women whom it knew so well in private life had been creating something—an illusion an ecstasy a mood—which transcended the sum total of their personalities It was this miracle but dimly apprehended perhaps which left the audience impressed and eager for the next act
That madam will go her own road said Uncle Meshach under cover of the clapping
Leonoras smile was embarrassed What do you mean she asked him
He bent his head towards her looking into her face with a sort of generous cynicism
I mean shell go her own road he repeated
And then observing that most of the men were leaving their seats he told Leonora that he should step across to the Tiger if she would let him As he passed out leaning forward on a 155stick lightly clutched in the left hand several people demanded his opinion about the spectacle Nay nay—— he replied again and again waving one after another out of his course
In the barparlour of the Tiger the young blades the genuine fast men the deliberate middleaged persons who took one glass only and the regular nightly customers mingled together in a dense and noisy crowd under a canopy of smoke The barmaid and her assistant enjoyed their brief minutes of feverish contact with the great world Behind the counter walled in by a rampart of dressshirts they conjured with bottles glasses and taps heard and answered ten men at once reckoned change by a magic beyond arithmetic peered between shoulders to catch the orders of their particular friends and at the same time acquired detailed information as to the progress of the opera Late comers who forcing a way into the room saw the multitude of men drinking and smoking and the unapproachable white faces of these two girls distantly flowering in the haze and the odour had that saturnalian sensation of seeing life which is peculiar to saloons during the entractes of theatrical entertainments The success of the opera and of that chit Millicent Stanway formed the staple of the eager conversation though here and there a sober 156couple would be discussing the tramcars or the quinquennial assessment exactly as if Gilbert and Sullivan had never been born It appeared that Milly had a future that she was the best Patience yet seen in the district amateur or professional that any burlesque manager would jump at her that in five years if she liked she might be getting a hundred a week and that Dolly Chose the idol of the Tivoli and the Pavilion had not half her style It also appeared that Milly had no brains of her own that the leading man had taught her all her business that her voice was thin and a trifle throaty that she was too vulgar for the true Savoy tradition and that in five years she would have gone off to nothing But the optimists carried the argument Sundry men who had seen Meshach in the second row of the stalls expressed a keen desire to ask the old bachelor pointblank what he thought of his nephews daughter but Meshach did not happen to come into the Tiger
When the crowd had thinned somewhat Harry Burgess entered hurriedly and called for a whisky and potass which the barmaid who fancied him served on the instant
I wanted to get a wreath he confided to her But Pointons is closed
Why Mr Burgess she said smiling 157theres a lot of flowers in the coffeeroom and with them and the leaves off that laurel down the yard and a bit of wire I could make you one in no time
Can you He seemed doubtful
Can I she exclaimed I should think I could and a beauty As soon as these gentleman are gone——
Its awfully kind of you said Harry brightening Can you send it round to me at the artists entrance in half an hour
She nodded beaming at the prospect The manufacture of that wreath would be a source of colloquial gratification to her for days
Harry politely responded to such remarks as Devilish good show Burgess drank in one gulp another whisky and potass and hastened away The remainder of the company soon followed the barmaid disappeared from the bar and her assistant was left languidly to watch a solitary pair of topers who would certainly not leave till the clock showed eleven
The auditorium during the entracte was more ceremonious but not less noisy than the barparlour of the Tiger The pleasant warmth the sudden increase of light after the fall of the curtain the certainty of a success and the 158consciousness of sharing in the brilliance of that success—all these things raised the spirits and produced the loquacity of an intoxication The individuality of each person was set free from its customary prison and joyously displayed its best side to the company The universal chatter amounted to a din
But Leonora cut off by empty seats on either hand sat silent She was glad to be able to do so She would have liked to be at home in solitude to think For she was if not unhappy at any rate disturbed and dubious She felt embarrassed amid this glare and this bright murmur of conversation as though she were being watched discussed and criticised She was the mother of the star responsible for the star guilty of all the stars indiscretions And it was a timorous reluctant pride which she took in her daughters success The truth was that Milly had astonished and frightened her When Ethel and Milly were allowed to join the Society the possible results of the permission had not been foreseen Both Leonora and John had thought of the girls as modest members of the chorus in an affair unmistakably and confessedly amateur Ethel had kept within the anticipation But here was Milly an actress exploiting herself with unconstrained gestures and arch glances and twirlings of her 159short skirt to a crowded and miscellaneous audience Leonora did not like it her susceptibilities were outraged She blushed at this amazing public contradiction of Millys bringingup It seemed to her as if she had never known the real Milly and knew her now for the first time What would the other mothers think What would all Hillport think secretly and say openly behind the backs of the Stanways The girl was as innocent as a fawn she had the free grace of extreme youth no one could utter a word against her But she was rouged her lips were painted several times she had shown her knees and she seemed incapable of shyness She was at home on the stage she faced a thousand people with a pert a brazen attitude and said Look at me enjoy me as I enjoy your fervent glances I am here to tickle your fancy Patience She was no more Patience than she was Sister Dora or a heroine of Charlotte Yonges She was the eternal unashamed doll who twists men round her little finger and smiles on them always with an instinct for finance
Quite a score for Milly said a polite voice in Leonoras ear It was Mrs Burgess who sat in the next row
Do you think so Leonora replied perceptibly reddening
160Oh yes said Mrs Burgess with smooth insistence And dear Ethel is very sweet in the chorus too
Leonora tried to fix her thoughts on the grateful figure of mild nervous passionate Ethel the child of her deepest affection
She turned sharply Arthur Twemlow was standing in the shadow of the sideaisle near the door She knew he was there before her eyes saw him He was evidently rather at a loss unnoticed and irresolute He caught sight of her and bowed She said to herself that she wished to be alone in her embarrassment that she could not bear to talk to any one nevertheless she raised her finger and beckoned to him while striving hard to refrain from doing so He approached at once He is not in America she reflected in sudden agitation He is here actually here In an instant we shall speak
I quite understood you had gone back to New York she said looking at him as he stood in front of her with the upward feminine appealing gesture that men love
What he exclaimed Without saying goodbye No And how are you all It seems just about a year since I saw you last
All well thanks she said smiling Wont you sit here Its Johns seat but he isnt coming
161Then you are alone He seemed to apologise for the rest of his sex
She told him that Uncle Meshach was with her and would return directly When he asked how the opera was going and she learnt that being detained at Knype he had not seen the first act she was relieved He would make the discovery concerning Millicent gradually and by her side it was better so she thought—less disconcerting In a slight pause of their talk she was startled to feel her heart beating like a hammer against her corsage Her eyes had brightened She conversed rapidly pleased to be talking pleased at his sympathetic responsiveness ignoring the audience and also forgetting the uneasy preoccupations of her recent solitude The men returned from the Tiger and elsewhere all except Uncle Meshach The lights were lowered The conductors stick curtly demanded silence and attention She sank back in her seat
A peremptory conductor remarked Twemlow in a whisper
Yes she laughed And this simple exchange of thought effected as it were surreptitiously in the gloom and contrary to the rules gave her a distinct sensation of joy
Then began in Bursley Town Hall a scene 162similar to the scenes which have rendered famous the historic stages of European capitals The verve and personal charm of a young débutante determined to triumph and the enthusiasm of an audience proudly conscious that it was making a reputation reacted upon and intensified each other to such a degree that the atmosphere became electric delirious magical Not a soul in the auditorium or on the stage but what lived consummately during those minutes—some creatively like the conductor and Millicent some agonised with jealousy like Florence Gardner and a few of the chorus one maternally in tumultuous distress of spirit and the great naïve mass yielding with rapture to a sensuous spell
The outstanding defect in the libretto of Patience is the decentralisation of interest in the second act The alert ones who remembered that in that act the heroine has only one song and certain passages of dialogue not remarkable for dramatic force had predicted that Millicent would inevitably lose ground as the evening advanced They were however deceived Her delivery of the phrase I am miserable beyond description brought the house down by its coquettish artificiality and the renowned ballad Love is a plaintive song established her unforgettably in the affections of the audience Her exit weep163ing was a tremendous stroke though all knew that she meant them to see that these tears were simply a delightful pretence The opera came to a standstill while she responded to an imperative call She bowed laughing and then suddenly affecting to cry again ran off with the result that she had to return
D——n it She hasnt got much to learn has she the conductor murmured to the first violin a professional from Manchester
But her greatest efforts she reserved for the difficult and critical prose conversations which now alone remained to her those dialogues which seem merely to exist for the purpose of separating the numbers allotted to all the other principals It was as though during the entracte surrounded by the paintpots the intrigues and the wild confusion of the dressingroom Millicent had been able to commune with herself and to foresee and take arms against the peril of an anticlimax By sheer force ingenuity vivacity flippancy and sauciness she lifted her lines to the level and above the level of the rest of the piece She carried the audience with her she knew it all her colleagues knew it and if they chafed they chafed in secret The performance went better and better as the end approached The audience had long since ceased to notice defects only the 164conductor the leader and a few discerning members of the troupe were aware that a catastrophe had been escaped by pure luck two minutes before the descent of the curtains
And at that descent the walls of the Town Hall which had echoed to political tirades the solemn recitatives of oratorios the mercantile uproar of bazaars the banal compliments of prizegivings the arid utterances of lecturers on science and art and the moans of sinners stricken with a sense of guilt at religious revivals—those walls resounded to a gay and frenzied ovation which is memorable in the town for its ungoverned transports of approval The Operatic Society as a whole was first acclaimed all the performers posing in rank on the stage Then as the deafening applause showed no sign of diminution the curtains were drawn back instead of being raised again and the principals beginning with the humblest paraded in pairs in front of the footlights Milly and her fortunate cavalier came last The cavalier advanced two paces took Millys hand signed to her to cross over and retired The child was left solitary on the stage—solitary but unabashed glowing with delight and smiling as pertly as ever The leader of the orchestra stood up and handed her a wreath which she accepted like an oath of fealty and the wreath hurriedly manu165factured by the barmaid of the Tiger out of some cut flowers and the old laurel tree in the Tiger yard became when Milly grasped it a mysterious and impressive symbol Many persons in the audience wanted to cry as they beheld this vision of the proud confident triumphant child holding the wreath while the fierce upward ray of the footlights illuminated her small chin and her quivering nostrils She tripped off backwards with a gesture of farewell The applause continued Would she return Not if the ferocious jealousies behind could have paralysed her as she hesitated in the wings But the world was on her side that night she responded again she kissed her hands to her world and disappeared still kissing them and the evening was finished
Well said Twemlow calmly I guess youve got an actress in the family
Leonora and he remained in their seats waiting till the press of people in the aisles should have thinned and also so far as Leonora was concerned to avoid the necessity of replying to remarks about Milly The atmosphere was still charged with excitement but Leonora observed that Arthur Twemlow did not share it Though he had applauded vigorously there had been no trace of emotional transport in his demeanour 166He spoke at once immediately the lights were turned up giving her no chance to collect herself
But do you think so she said She remembered she had made the same foolish reply to Mrs Burgess With Twemlow she wished to be unconventional and sincere but she could not succeed
Dont you He seemed to regard the situation as rather amusing
You surely cant mean that she would do for the stage
Ask any one here whether she isnt born for it he answered
This is only an amateurs affair Leonora argued
And shes only an amateur But she wont be an amateur long
But a girl like Milly cant be clever enough——
It depends on what you call clever Shes got the gift of making the audience hug itself Youll see
See Milly on the stage Leonora asked uneasily I hope not
Why my dear lady Isnt she built for it Doesnt she enjoy it Isnt she at home there Whats the matter with the stage anyhow
167Her father would never hear of such a thing said Leonora Towards the close of the opera she had seen John in morning attire propped against a sidewall and peering at the stage and his daughter with a bewildered bored unsympathetic air
Ah Twemlow ejaculated grimly
A moment later as he was putting her cloak over her shoulders he said in a different kinder more soothing tone I guess I know just how you feel
She looked at him raising her eyebrows and smiling with melancholy amusement
In the corridor Stanway came hurrying up to them obviously excited
Oh youre here Nora he burst out Ive been hunting for you everywhere Ive just been told that a messenger came for Uncle Meshach a the interval to say that Aunt Hannah was ill Do you know anything about it
No she said Uncle only told me that aunt wasnt equal to coming I wondered where uncle had got to
Well Stanway continued youd better go to Church Street at once and see after things
Leonora seemed to hesitate
As quick as you can he said with irritation and increasing excitement Dont waste a moment 168It may be serious Ill drive the girls home and then Ill come and fetch you
If Mrs Stanway cares I will walk down with her said Arthur Twemlow
Yes do Twemlow theres a good chap he welcomed the idea And with that he wafted them impulsively into the street
Then Stanway stood waiting by his equipage for Ethel and Milly He spoke to no one but examined the harness critically and put some curt question to Carpenter about the breeching It was a chilly night and the glare of the lamps showed that Prince steamed a little under his rug Ten minutes elapsed before Ethel came
Here we are father she said with pleasant satisfaction Wheres mother
I should think so he returned The horse taking cold and me waiting and waiting Your mothers had to go to Aunt Hannahs Whats become of Milly He was losing his temper
Milly had to traverse the whole length of the corridor The Mayor heartily congratulated her The middleaged violinist from Manchester spoke to her amiably as one public artist to another and the conductor who was with him told her in an unusual and indiscreet mood of candour that she had simply made the show Others expressed 169the same thought in more words Near the entrance stood Harry Burgess patently expectant He was flushed and looked handsomely dandiacal and rakish as he rolled a cigarette in those quick fingers of his He meant to explain to her that the happy idea of the wreath was his own
He accosted her unceremoniously confidently but she drew away with a magnificent touch of haughtiness
Goodnight Harry she said coldly and passed on
The rash and conceited boy had not divined as he should have done that a prima donna is a prima donna whether on the stage in a brilliant costume or traversing a dingy corridor in the plain blue serge and simple hat of a manufacturers daughter aged eighteen Offering no reply to her formal salutation he remained quite still for a moment and then swaggered off to the Tiger
Look here my girl said Stanway furiously to his youngest Do you suppose were going to wait for you all night Jump in
Millys lips did not move but she faced the rude blusterer with a frigid angry insolent gaze And her girlish eyes said Youve got me under your thumb now you horrid beast But never mind Long after you are dead and buried and rotten I shall be famous and pretty 170and rich and if you are remembered it will only be because you were my father Do your worst odious man you cant kill me
And all the way home the cruel just unmerciful thoughts of insulted youth mingled with the generous and beautiful sensations of her triumph
Nay its all over said Meshach when Twemlow and Leonora entered
What Leonora exclaimed glancing quickly at Arthur Twemlow as if for support in a crisis
Doctors gone but just this minute Hers gotten over it
For a moment she had thought that Aunt Hannah was dead Johns anxious excitement had communicated itself to her she had imagined the worst possibilities Now the sensation of relief took her unawares and she was obliged to sit down suddenly
In the little parlour wizened Meshach sat by the hob as he always sat warming one hand at the fire and looking round sideways at the tall visitors in their rich evening attire Leonora heard Twemlow say something about a heart attack and the thick hard veins on Aunt Hannahs wrist
171Ay Meshach went on employing the old dialect a sign with him of unusual agitation I brought Dr Hawley with me he was at yon show And when us got here Hannah was lying on th floor just there with her head on this ere hearthrug Susan th woman told us as th missis said she felt as if she were falling down and then down her falls She was staring hard at th ceiling with eyes fit to burst and her face as white as a sheet Doctor lifts her up and puts her in a chair Bless us How her did gasp And her lips were blue Hannah I says Her heard but her couldna answer Her limbs were all of a tremble Then her sighed and fetched up a long breath or two Where am I Meshach her says whats amiss Doctor told her for stick her tongue out and her could do that and he put a candle to her eyes Hers in bed now Susans sitting with her
Ill go up and see if I can do anything said Leonora rising
No Meshach stopped her Youll happen excite her Doctor said her was to go to sleep and hes to send in a soothing draught Theres no danger—not now—not till next time Her mun take care mun Hannah
Then it is the heart Leonora asked
172Ay Its the heart
Twemlow and Leonora sat silent embarrassed in the little parlour with its antimacassars its stiff chairs its high mantelpiece and the glass partition which seemed to swallow up like a pit the rays from the hissing gasjet over the table The image of the diminutive frail creature concealed upstairs obsessed them and Leonora felt guilty because she had been unwittingly absorbed in the gaiety of the opera while Aunt Hannah was in such danger
I doubt I munna tap that again Meshach remarked with a short dry plaintive laugh pointing to the pewter platter on the mantelpiece by means of which he was accustomed to summon his sister when he wanted her
The visitors looked at each other Leonoras eyes were moist
But isnt there anything I can do uncle she demanded
Ill see if hers asleep Sit thee still said Meshach and he crept out of the room and up the creaking stair
Poor old fellow Twemlow murmured glancing at his watch
What time is it she asked for the sake of saying something Its no use me staying
Five to eleven If I run off at once I can 173catch the last train Goodnight Tell Mr Myatt will you
She took his hand with a feeling of intimacy
It seemed to her that they had shared many emotions that night
Ill let you out she suggested and in the obscurity of the narrow lobby they came into contact and shook hands again she could not at first find the upper latch of the door
I shall be seeing you all soon he said in a low voice on the step She nodded and closed the door softly
She thought how simple agreeable reliable honest goodnatured and sympathetic he was
Hers sleeping like a babby Meshach stated returning to the parlour He lighted his pipe and through the smoke looked at Leonora in her dark magnificent dress
Then John arrived pompous and elaborately calm but he had driven Prince to Hillport and back in twentyfive minutes John listened to the recital of events
Youre sure theres no danger now He could disguise neither his present relief nor his fear for the future
Thourt all right yet nephew said Meshach with an ironic inflection as he gazed into the dying fire Her may live another ten year 174And I might flit tomorrow Thourt too anxious my lad Keep it down
John deeply offended made no reply
Why shouldnt I be anxious he exclaimed angrily as they drove home Whose fault is it if I am Does he expect me not to be
175
CHAPTER VII
THE DEPARTURE
As I approach the crisis in Leonoras life I hesitate fearing lest by an unfit phrase I should deprive her of your sympathies and fearing also that this fear may incline me to set down less than the truth about her
She was possessed by a mysterious sensation of content She wished to lie supine—except in her domestic affairs—and to dream that all was well or would be well It was as though she had determined that nothing could extinguish or even disturb the mild flame of happiness which burned placidly within her And yet the anxieties of her existence were certainly increasing again On the morning after the opera John had departed on one of his sudden flying visits to London these journeys formerly frequent had been in abeyance for a time and their resumption seemed to point to some renewal of his difficulties He had called at Church Street on his way to Knype and Carpenter had brought back word that Miss 176Myatt was wonderfully better but when Leonora herself called at Church Street later in the morning and at last saw Aunt Hannah she was impressed by the change in the old creature whose nervous system had the appearance of being utterly disorganised Then there was the difficult case of Ethel and Fred Ryley in which Leonora had done nothing whatever and there was the case of Rose whose alienation from the rest of the household became daily more marked Finally there was the new and portentous case of Millicent probably the most disconcerting of the three Nevertheless amid all these solicitudes Leonora remained equable optimistic and quietly joyous Her state of mind so miraculously altered in a few hours gave her no surprise It seemed natural everything seemed natural she ceased for a period to waste emotion in the futile desire for her lost youth
On the second day after the opera she was sitting at her Sheraton desk in the small nondescript room which opened off the diningroom In front of her lay a large tablet with innumerable names of things printed on it in three columns opposite each name a little hole had been drilled and in many of the holes little sticks of wood stood upright Leonora uprooted a stick exiling it to a long horizontal row of holes at the top of 177the tablet and then wrote in a pocketbook she uprooted another stick and wrote again so continuing till only a few sticks were left in the columns these she spared Then she rang the bell for the parlourmaid and relinquished to her the tablet the peculiar rite was over
Is dinner ready she asked looking at the small clock which she usually carried about with her from room to room
Yes m
Then ring the gong And tell Carpenter I shall want the trap at a quarter past two for two Im going to shop in Hanbridge and then to meet Mr Stanway at Knype We shall be in before four Have some tea ready And dont forget the eclairs today Bessie She smiled
No m Did you think on to write about them new dogbiscuits maam
Ill write now said Leonora and she turned to the desk
The gong sounded the dinner was brought in Through the doorway between the two rooms—there was no door only a portière—Leonora heard Ethels rather heavy footsteps I dont think mother will want you to wait today Bessie Ethels voice said Then followed after the maids exit the noise of a dishcover being lifted and dropped and Ethels exclamation 178Um And then the voices of Rose and Millicent approached in altercation
Come along mother Ethel called out
Coming answered Leonora putting the note in an envelope
The idea said Roses voice scornfully
Yes retorted Millys voice The idea
Leonora listened as she wrote the address
You always were a conceited thing Milly and since this wonderful opera youre positively ridiculous I almost wish Id gone to it now just to see what you were like
Ah well You just didnt and so you dont know
No indeed Id got something better to do than watch a pack of amateurs—— There was a pause for silent contempt
Well Keep it up keep it up
Anyhow Im perfectly certain father wont let you go
I shall go
And besides I want to go to London and you may be absolutely certain my child that he wont let two of us go
I shall speak to him first
Oh no you wont
Shant I Youll see
No you wont Because it just happens 179that I spoke to him the night before last And hes making inquiries and hell tell me tonight So what do you think of that
Leonora drew aside the portière
My dear girls she protested benevolently standing there
The feud always apt thus to leap into a perfectly Corsican fury of bitterness sank back at once to its ordinary level of passive mutual repudiation Rose and Millicent were not bereft of the finer feelings which distinguish humanity from the beasts of the jungle sometimes they could be almost affectionate There were however moments when to all appearance they hated each other with a tigerish and crouching hatred such as may be found only between two opposing feminine temperaments linked together by the family tie
Whats this about your going to London Rosie Leonora asked in a voice soothing but surprised when the meal had begun
You know mamma I mentioned it to you the other day The girls tone implied that what she had said to Leonora perhaps went in at one ear and out at the other
Leonora remembered Rose had in fact casually told her that a school friend in Oldcastle who was studying for the same examination as 180herself had gone to London for six weeks final coaching under what Rose called a ladycrammer
But you didnt tell me that you wanted to go as well Leonora said
Yes mother I did Rose affirmed with calm You forget Im sure I shant pass if I dont go So I asked father while you were all at this opera affair
And what did he say Ethel demanded
He said he would make inquiries this morning and see
Ethel gave a laugh of goodnatured derision Yes she exclaimed and youll see too
In response to this oracular utterance Rose merely bent lower over her plate
Millicent conscious of a brilliant vocation and of an impassioned resolve refrained from the discussion and the sense of her ineffable superiority bore hard on that lithe mercurial youthfulness The Signal in praising Millicents performance at the opera had predicted for her a career and had thoughtfully quoted instances of wellborn amateurs who had become professionals and made great names on the stage Millicent knew that all Bursley was talking about her And yet the family life was unaltered no one at home seemed to be much impressed not even Ethel though 181Ethels sympathy could be depended upon Milly was still Milly the youngest the least important the chit of a thing At times it appeared to her as though the triumph of that ecstatic and glorious night was after all nothing but an illusion and that only the interminable dailiness of family life was real Then the ruthless and calculating minx in her shut tight those pretty lips and coldly determined that nothing should stand against ambition
I do hope you will pass said Leonora cordially to Rose You certainly deserve to
I know I shant unless I get some outside help My brain isnt that sort of brain Its another sort Only one has to knuckle down to these wretched exams first
Leonora did not understand her daughter She knew however that there was not the slightest chance of Rose being allowed to go to London alone for any lengthened period and she wondered that Rose could be so blind as not to perceive this As for Millicents vague notions which the child had furtively broached during her fathers absence the more Leonora thought upon them the more fantastically impossible they seemed She changed the subject
The repast which had commenced with due ceremony degenerated into a feminine mess hasty informal counterfeit That elaborate and 182irksome pretence that a man is present, with which women when they are alone always begin to eat was gradually dropped and the meal ended abruptly inconclusively like a bad play
Lets go for a walk said Ethel
Yes said Milly lets
Mamma Milly called from the drawingroom window
Leonora was walking about the misty garden where little now remained that was green save the yews the cypresses and the rhododendrons Bran his whiteandfawn coat glittering with minute drops of water plodded heavily and content by her side along the narrow damp paths She was dressed for driving and awaited Carpenter with the trap
In reply to Leonoras gesture of attention Milly instead of speaking from the window ran quickly to her across the sodden lawn And Millys running was so girlish simple and unaffected that Leonora seemed by means of it to have found her daughter again the daughter who had disappeared in the adroit and impudent creature of the footlights She was glad of the reassurance
Heres Mr Twemlow mamma said Milly with a rather embarrassed air and they looked 183at each other while Bran frowned in glancing upwards
At the same moment Arthur Twemlow and Ethel entered the garden together The social atmosphere was rendered bracing by this invasion of the masculine every personality awoke and became vigilantly itself
We met Mr Twemlow on the marsh mother walking from Oldcastle to Bursley said Ethel after the ritual of greeting and so we brought him in
As Leonora was on the point of leaving the house the situation was somewhat awkward and a slight hesitation on her part showed this
Youre going out he said
Oh mamma Milly cried quickly do let me go and meet father instead of you I want to
What alone Leonora exclaimed in a kind of dream
Ill go too said Ethel
And suppose you have the horse down
Well then well take Carpenter Milly suggested Ill run and tell him to put his overcoat on and put the backseat in And she scampered off
Twemlow was fondling the dog with an air of detachment
In the fraction of an instant a thousand wild 184and disturbing thoughts swept through Leonoras brain Was it possible that Arthur Twemlow had suggested this change of plan to the girls Or had the girls already noticed with the keen eyes of youth that she and Arthur Twemlow enjoyed each others society and naïvely wished to give her pleasure Would Arthur Twemlow but for the accidental encounter on the Marsh have passed by her home without calling If she remained what conclusion could not be drawn If she persisted in going might not he want to come with her She was ashamed of the preposterous inward turmoil
And my shopping she smiled blushing
Give me the list mater said Ethel and took the morocco book out of her hand
Never before had Leonora felt so helpless in the sudden clutch of fate She knew she was a willing prey She wished to remain and politeness to Arthur Twemlow demanded that this wish should not be disguised Yet what would she not have given even to have felt herself able to disguise it
How incredibly stupid I am she thought
No sooner had the two girls departed than Twemlow began to laugh
I must tell you he said with candid amusement that this is a plant Those two daughters 185of yours calculated to leave you and me here alone together
Yes she murmured still constrained
Miss Milly wants me to talk you round about her going in for the stage When I met them on the Marsh of course I began to pay her compliments and I just happened to say I thought she was a born comédienne and before I knew it T was blindfolded handcuffed and carried off so to speak
This was the simple innocent explanation Oh how incredibly stupid stupid stupid I was she thought again and a feeling of exquisite relief surged into her being Mingled with that relief was the deep joy of realising that Ethel and Milly fully shared her instinctive predilection for Arthur Twemlow Here indeed was the supreme security
I must say my daughters get more and more surprising every day she remarked impelled to offer some sort of conventional apology for her childrens unconventional behaviour
They are charming girls he said briefly
On the surface of her profound relief and joy there played like a flying fish the thought Was he meaning to call in any case Was he on his way here
They talked about Aunt Hannah whom 186Twemlow had seen that morning and who was improving rapidly But he agreed with Leonora that the old ladys vitality had been irretrievably shattered Then there was a pause followed by some remarks on the weather and then another pause Bran after watching them attentively for a few moments as they stood side by side near the French window rose up from off his haunches and walked gloomily away
Bran Bran Twemlow cried
Its no use she laughed Hes vexed He thinks hes being neglected Hell go to his kennel and nothing will bring him out of it except food Come into the house Its going to rain again
Well the visitor exclaimed familiarly
They were seated by the fire in the drawingroom Leonora was removing her gloves
Well she repeated And so you still think Milly ought to be allowed to go on the stage
I think she will go on the stage he said
You cant imagine how it upsets me even to think of it Leonora seemed to appeal for his sympathy
Oh yes I can he replied Didnt I tell you the other night that I knew exactly how you felt But youve got to get over that I 187guess Youve got to get on to yourself Mr Myatt told me what he said to you——
So Uncle Meshach has been talking about it too she interrupted
Why yes certainly Of course hes quite right Millys bound to go her own way Why not make up your mind to it and help her and straighten things out for her
But——
Look here Mrs Stanway he leaned forward will you tell me just why it upsets you to think of your daughter going on the stage
I dont know I cant explain But it does
She smiled at him smoothing out her gloves one after the other on her lap
Its nothing but superstition you know he said gently returning her smile
Yes she admitted I suppose it is
He was silent for a moment as if undecided what to say next She glanced at him surreptitiously and took in all the details of his attire—the high white collar the dark tweed suit obviously of American origin the thin silver chain that emerged from beneath his waistcoat and disappeared on a curve into the hip pocket of his trousers the boots with their long pointed toes His heavy moustache and the smooth bluish chin struck her as ideally masculine
188No parents he burst out no parents can see things from their childrens point of view
Oh she protested There are times when I feel so like my daughters that I am them
He nodded Yes he said abandoning his position at once I can believe that Youre an exception If I hadnt sort of known all the time that you were I wouldnt be here now talking like this
Its so accidental the whole business she remarked branching off to another aspect of the case in order to mask the confusion caused by the sincere flattery in his voice It was only by chance that Milly had that particular part at all Suppose she hadnt had it What then
Everythings accidental he replied Everything that ever happened is accidental in a way—in another it isnt If you look at your own life for instance youll find its been simply a series of coincidences Im sure mine has been Sheer chance from beginning to end
Yes she said thoughtfully and put her chin in the palm of her left hand
And as for the stage why nearly every one goes on the stage by chance It just occurs thats all And moreover I guarantee that the parents of fifty per cent of all the actresses now 189on the boards began by thinking what a terrible blow it was to them that their daughters should want to do that Cant you see what I mean He emphasised his words more and more Im certain you can
She signified assent It seemed to her as he continued to talk that for the first time she was listening to natural convincing common sense in that home of hers where existence was governed by precedent and by conventional ideas and by the profound parental instinct which meets all requests with a refusal It seemed to her that her children though to outward semblance they had much freedom had never listened to anything but No No dear Of course you cant I think you had better not and Once for all I forbid it She wondered why this should have been so and why its strangeness had not impressed her before She had a distant fleeting vision of a household in which parents and children behaved like free and sensible human beings instead of like the virtuous and the martyrised puppets of a terrible system called acting for the best And she thought again what an extraordinary man Arthur Twemlow was strongminded clearheaded sympathetic and delightful She enjoyed intensely the sensation of their intimacy
190Jack will never agree she said when she could say nothing else
Ah Jack He slightly imitated her tone Well that remains to be seen
Why do you take all this trouble for Milly she asked him Its very good of you
Because Im a fool a meddling ass he replied lightly standing up and stroking his clothes
You arent her eyes said you are a dear
No he went on in a serious tone Milly just wanted me to speak to you and after all I didnt see why I shouldnt Its no earthly business of mine but—oh well Goodbye I must be getting along
Have you got an appointment to keep she questioned him
No—not an appointment
Well then you will stay a little longer The trap will be back quite soon Her voice seemed playfully to indicate that as she had submitted to his domination so he must submit now to hers And if you will excuse me one moment I will go and take off this thick jacket
Up in the bedroom as she removed her coat in front of the pierglass she smiled at her image timorously yet in full content Millys prospects did not appear to her to have been practically im191proved nor could she piece out of Arthur Twemlows conversation a definite argument nevertheless she felt that he had made her see something more clearly than heretofore that he had induced in her not by logic but by persuasiveness a mood towards her children which was brighter more sanguine and even more loving than any in her previous experience She was glad that she had left him alone for a minute because such familiar treatment of him somehow established definitely his status as a friend of the house
Listen Twemlow said Stanway loudly I meant to run down to the office for an hour this afternoon but if youll stay Ill stay Thats a bargain eh
John had returned from London blusterously cheerful and Twemlow stood in the centre of his vehement noisy hospitality as in the centre of a typhoon He consented to stay because the two girls with hair blown and still in their wet macintoshes took him by the arm and said he must He was not the first guest in that house whom the apparent heartiness of the host had failed to convince Always there was something sinister insincere and bullying in the invitations which John gave and in his reception of visitors Hence it was perhaps that visitors did 192not abound under his roof despite the richness of the table and the ordered elegance of every appointment Women paid calls the girls unlike Leonora had their intimates including Harry but men seldom came and it was not often that the principal meals of the day were shared by an outsider of either sex
Arthurs presence on a second occasion was therefore the more stimulating It affected the whole house even to the kitchen which indeed usually vibrates in sympathy with the drawingroom In Bessies vivacious demeanour as she served the hightea at six oclock might be observed the symptoms of the agreeable excitation which all felt Even Rose unbent and Leonora thought how attractive the girl could be when she chose But towards the end of the meal it became evident that Rose was preoccupied Leonora Ethel and Millicent passed into the drawingroom John pulled out his immense cigarcase and the two men began to smoke
Come along said Stanway speaking thickly with the cigar in his mouth
Papa said Rose ominously just as he was following Twemlow out of the door She spoke with quiet cold distinctness
What is it
Did you inquire about that
193He paused Oh yes Rose he answered rapidly I inquired She seemed a very clever woman I must say But Ive been thinking it over and Ive come to the conclusion that it wont do for you to go I dont like the idea of it—you in London for six weeks or more alone You must do what you can here And if you fail this time you must try again
But I can stay in the same lodgings as Sarah Fuge The house is kept by her cousin or some relation
And then theres the expense he proceeded
Father I told you the other night I didnt want to put you to any expense Ive got thirtyseven pounds of my own and I will pay I prefer to pay
Oh no no he exclaimed
Well why cant I go she demanded bluntly
Ill think it over again—but I dont like it Rose I dont like it
But there isnt a day to waste father she complained
Bessie entered to clear the table
Hum Well Ill think it over again He breathed out smoke and departed Rose set her lips hard She was seen no more that evening
In the drawingroom Stanway found Twemlow 194and Millicent talking in low voices on the hearthrug Ethel lounged on the sofa Leonora was not present but she came in immediately
Lets have a game at solo John suggested And because five was a convenient number they all played Twemlow and Milly were the best performers Millys gift for cardplaying was notorious in the family
Do you ever play poker Twemlow asked when the other three had been beggared of counters
No said John cautiously Not here
Its lots of fun Twemlow went on looking at the girls
Oh Mr Twemlow Milly cried Its awfully gambly isnt it Do teach us
In a quarter of an hour Milly was bluffing her father with success She said that in future she should never want to play at any other game As for Leonora though she lost and gained counters with happy equanimity she did not like the game it frightened her When Milly had shown a straight flush and scooped the kitty she sent the child out of the room with a message to the kitchen concerning coffee and sandwiches
Wont Milly sing Twemlow asked
Certainly if you wish Leonora responded
195Ay Lets have something said Stanway lazily
And when Millicent returned she was told that she must sing before eating She sang Love is a Plaintive Song to Ethels inert accompaniment and she gave it exactly as though she had been on the stage with all the dramatic action all the freedom all the allurements which she had lavished on the audience in the Town Hall
Very good said her father I like that Its very pretty I didnt hear it the other night Twemlow merely thanked the artist Leonora was silently uncomfortable
After coffee both the girls disappeared Twemlow looked round and then spoke to Stanway
Ive been very much impressed by your daughters talent he said His tone was extremely serious It implied that now the children were gone the adults could talk with freedom
Stanway was a little startled and more than a little flattered
Really he questioned
Really said Twemlow emphasising still further his seriousness Has she ever been taught
Only by a local teacher up here at Hillport Leonora told him
196She ought to have lessons from a firstclass master
Why asked Stanway abruptly
Well Twemlow said you never know——
You honestly think her voice is worth cultivating John demanded impelled to participate in Twemlows gravity
I do And not only her voice——
Ah Stanway mused theres no firstclass masters in this district
Why I met a man from Manchester at the Five Towns Hotel last night said Twemlow who comes down to Knype once a week to give lessons He used to sing in opera They say hes the best man about and that hes taught a lot of good people I forget his name
I expect you mean Cecil Corfe Leonora said cheerfully She had been amazed at the compliance of Johns attitude
Yes thats it
At the same moment there was a faint noise at the French window John went to investigate As soon as his back was turned Twemlow glanced at Leonora with eyes full of a private amusement which he invited her to share Cant I just handle him he seemed to say She smiled but cautiously less she should disclose too fully her intense appreciation of his personality
197Why its the dog Stanway proclaimed and wet through Whats he doing loose Its raining like the devil
Im afraid I didnt fasten him up this afternoon I forgot said Leonora Oh my new rug
Bran plunged into the room with a glad deafening bark his tail thwacking the furniture like the flat of a sword
Get out you great brute Stanway ordered and then on the step he shouted into the darkness for Carpenter
Twemlow rose to look on
I cant let you walk to the station tonight Twemlow said Stanway still outside the room Carpenter shall drive you Yes he shall so dont argue And while hes about it he may as well take you straight to Knype You can go in the buggy—theres a hood to it
When the time came for departure John insisted on lending to Twemlow a large driving overcoat They stood in the hall together while Twemlow fumbled with the complicated apparatus of buttons Stanway whistled
By the way he said when are you coming in to look through those old accounts
Oh I dont know Twemlow answered somewhat taken by surprise
198I tell you what Ill do—Ill send you copies of them eh
I think you neednt trouble said Twemlow carelessly I guess I shall write to my sister and tell her I cant see any use in trying to worry out the old mans finances at this time of day
However Stan way repeated Ill send you the copies all the same And when you write to your sister will you give her my kindest regards?'
The whole family except Rose came into the porch to bid him goodnight In the darkness and the heavy rain could dimly be seen the rounded form of the buggy the cobs flanks shone in the glittering ray of the lamps Carpenter was hidden under the hood his mysterious hand raised the apron and Twemlow stepped quickly in
Goodnight said Ethel
Goodnight Mr Twemlow said Milly Be good
Youll see us again before you leave Twemlow said Johns imperious voice
You arent going back to America just yet are you Leonora asked from the back
No reply came from within the hood
Mother says you arent going back to 199America just yet are you Mr Twemlow Milly screamed in her treble
Arthur Twemlow showed his face No not yet I think he called See you again certainly And thanks once more
Tchick said Carpenter
The next evening after tea John Leonora and Rose were in the drawingroom Milly had run down to see her friend Cissie Burgess having with fine cruelty chosen that particular night because she happened to know that Harry would be out Ethel was invisible Rose had returned with bitter persistence to the siege of her fathers obstinacy
I should have six weeks clear she was saying
John consulted his pocketcalendar
No he corrected her you would only have a month It isnt worth while
I should have six weeks she repeated The exam isnt till January the seventh
But Christmas what about Christmas You must be here for Christmas
Why demanded Rose
Oh Rosie Leonora protested You cant be away for Christmas
Why not the girl demanded again coldly
200Both parents paused
Because you cant said John angrily The ideas absurd
I dont see it Rose persevered
Well I do John delivered himself And let that suffice
Roses face indicated the near approach of tears
It was at this juncture that Bessie opened the door and announced Mr Twemlow
I just called to bring back that magnificent greatcoat he said Its hanging up on its proper hook in the hall
Then he turned specially to Leonora who sat isolated near the fire She was not surprised to see him because she had felt sure that he would at once return the overcoat in person she had counted on him doing so As he came towards her she languorously lifted her arm without rising and the two bangles which she wore slipped tinkling down the wide sleeve They shook hands in silence smiling
I hope you didnt take cold last night she said at length
Not I he replied sitting down by her side
He was quick to detect the disturbance in the social atmosphere and though he tried to appear unconscious of it he did not succeed in 201the impossible Moreover Rose had evidently decided that despite his presence she would finish what she had begun
Very well father she said If youll let me go at once Ill come down for two days at Christmas
Yes John grumbled thats all very well But whos to take you You cant go alone And you know perfectly well that I only came back yesterday He recited this fact precisely as though it constituted a grievance against Rose
As if I couldnt go alone Rose exclaimed
If its London youre talking about Twemlow said I will be going up tomorrow by the midday flyer and could look after any lady that happened to be on that train and would accept my services He glanced pleasantly at Rose
Oh Mr Twemlow the girl murmured It was a ludicrously inadequate expression of her profound passionate gratitude to this knight but she could say no more
But can you be ready my dear Leonora inquired
I am ready said Rose
Its understood then Twemlow said later We shall meet at the depôt I cant stop another moment now Ive got a cab waiting outside
202Leonora wished to ask him whether notwithstanding his partial assurance of the previous evening his journey would really end at Euston or whether he was not taking London en route for New York But she could not bring herself to put the question She hoped that John might put it John however was taciturn
We shall see Rose off tomorrow of course was her last utterance to Twemlow
Leonora and her three daughters stood in the crowd on the platform of Knype railway station waiting for Arthur Twemlow and for the London express John had brought them to the station in the waggonette had kissed Rose and purchased her ticket and had then driven off to a creditors meeting at Hanbridge All the women felt rather mournful amid that bustle and confusion Leonora had said to herself again and again that it was absurd to regard this absence of Rose for a few weeks as a break in the family existence Yet the phrase the first break the first break ran continually in her mind The gentle sadness of her mood noticeably affected the girls It was as though they had all suddenly discovered a mutual unsuspected tenderness Milly put her hand on Roses shoulder and Rose did not resent the artless gesture
203I hope Mr Twemlow isnt going to miss it said Ethel voicing the secret apprehension of all
I shant miss it anyhow Rose remarked defiantly
Scarcely a minute before the train was due Milly descried Twemlow coming out of the booking office They pressed through the crowd towards him
Ah he exclaimed genially Here you are Baggage labelled
We thought you werent coming Mr Twemlow Milly said
You did I was kept quite a few minutes at the hotel You see I only had to walk across the road
We didnt really think any such thing said Leonora
The conversation fell to pieces
Then the express with its two engines its gilded luncheoncars and its postoffice van thundered in shaking the platform and seeming to occupy the entire station It had the air of pausing nonchalantly disdainfully in its mighty rush from one distant land of romance to another in order to suffer for a brief moment the assault of a puny and needlessly excited multitude
First stop Willesden yelled the porters
Say conductor said Twemlow sharply 204catching the luncheoncar attendant by the sleeve youve got two seats reserved for me—Twemlow
Twemlow Yes sir
Come along he said come along
The girls kissed at the steps of the car Goodbye
Well goodbye all said Twemlow I hope to see you again some time Say next fall
You surely arent—— Leonora began
Yes he resumed quickly I sail Saturday Must get back
Oh Mr Twemlow Ethel and Milly complained together
Rose was standing on the steps Leonora leaned and kissed the pale girl madly pressing her lips into Roses cheek Then she shook hands with Arthur Twemlow
Goodbye she murmured
I guess I shall write to you he said jauntily addressing all three of them and Ethel and Milly enthusiastically replied Oh do
The travellers penetrated into the car and reappeared at a window one on either side of a table covered with a white cloth and laid for two persons
Oh dont I wish I was going Milly exclaimed perceiving them
205Rose was now flushed with triumph She looked at Twemlow her lips moved she smiled She was a woman in the world Then they nodded and waved hands
The guard unfurled his green flag the engine gave a curt scornful whistle and lo the luncheoncar was gliding away from Leonora Ethel and Milly Lo the station was empty
I wonder what he will talk to her about thought Leonora
They had to cross the station by the underground passage and wait twenty minutes for a squalid shambling local train which took them to Shawport at the foot of the rise to Hillport
206
CHAPTER VIII
THE DANCE
About three months after its rendering of Patience the Bursley Amateur Operatic Society arranged to give a commemorative dance in the very scene of that histrionic triumph The fête was to surpass in splendour all previous entertainments of the kind recorded in the annals of the town It was talked about for weeks in advance several dressmakers nearly died of it and as the day approached the difficulty of getting ones self invited became extreme
You know Mrs Stanway said Harry Burgess when he met Leonora one afternoon in the street we are relying on you to be the bestdressed woman in the place
She smiled with a calmness which had in it a touch of gentle cynicism You shouldnt she answered
But youre coming arent you he inquired with eager concern Of late owing to the capricious frigidity of Millicents attitude towards 207him he had been much less a frequenter of Leonoras house and he was no longer privy to all its doings
Oh yes she said I suppose I shall come
Thats all right he exclaimed If you come you conquer They passed on their ways
Leonoras existence had slipped back into its old groove since the departure of Twemlow and the groove had deepened She lived by the force of habit hoping nothing from the future but fearing more than a little She seemed to be encompassed by vague and sinister portents After another brief interlude of apparent security Johns situation was again disquieting Trade was good in the Five Towns at least the manufacturers had temporarily forgotten to complain that it was very bad and the Monday afternoon footballmatches were magnificently attended Moreover John had attracted favourable attention to himself by his shrewd proposals to the Manufacturers Association for reform in the method of paying firemen and placers his ability was everywhere recognised At the same time however the Five Towns looked askance at him Rumour revived and said that he could not keep up his juggling performance for ever He was known to have speculated heavily for a rise in the shares of a great brewery which had falsified 208the prophecies of its founders when they benevolently sold it to the investing public Some people wondered how long John could hold those shares in a falling market Leonora had no definite knowledge of her husbands affairs since neither John nor any other person breathed a word to her about them And yet she knew by certain vibrations in the social atmosphere as mysterious and disconcerting as those discovered by Röntgen in the physical that disaster after having been repelled was returning from afar Money flowed through the house as usual nevertheless often as she drove about Bursley consciously exciting the envy and admiration which a handsome woman behind a fast cob is bound to excite her shamed fancy pictured the day when Prince should belong to another and she should walk perforce on the pavement in attire genteelly preserved from past affluence Only women know the keenest pang of these secret misgivings at once desperate and helpless
Nor did she find solace in her girls One Saturday afternoon Ethel came back from the dutyvisit to Aunt Hannah and said as it were confidentially to Leonora Fred called in while I was there mother and stayed for tea What could Leonora answer Who could deny Fred 209the right to visit his greataunt and his greatuncle both rapidly ageing And of what use to tell John She desired Ethels happiness but from that moment she felt like an accomplice in the furtive wooing and it seemed to her that she had forfeited both the confidence of her husband and the respect of her daughter Months ago she had meant by force of some initiative to regularise this idyll which by its stealthiness wounded the self-respect of all concerned Vain aspiration And now the fact that Fred Ryley had begun to call at Church Street appeared to indicate between him and Uncle Meshach a closer understanding which could only be detrimental to the interests of John
As for Rose that child of misfortune did well during the first four days of the examination but on the fifth day one of her chronic sickheadaches had in two hours nullified all the intense and ceaseless effort of two years It was precisely in chemistry that she had failed She arrived from London in tears and the tears were renewed when the formal announcement of defeat came three weeks later by telegraph and John added gaiety to the occasion by remarking What did I tell you The girls proud and tenacious spirit weakened by the long strain was daunted at last She lounged in the house and garden 210listless supine torpid instinctively waiting for Natures recovery
Millicent alone in the house was unreservedly cheerful and lighthearted She had the advantage of Mr Corfes instruction for two hours every Wednesday and expressed herself as well satisfied with his methods Her own intimate friends knew that she quite intended to go on the stage but they were enjoined to say nothing Consequently John Stanway was one of the few people in Bursley unaware of the definiteness of Millys private plans Leonora was another Leonora sometimes felt that Millys assertive and indestructible vivacity must be due to some specific cause but Mr Cecil Corfes reputation for seriousness and discretion precluded the idea that he was encouraging the girl to dream dreams without the consent of her parents
Leonora might have questioned Milly but she perceived the futility of doing so It became more and more clear to her that she did not possess the confidence of her daughters They loved her and they admired her and she for her part made a point of trusting them but their confidence was withheld Under the influence of Arthur Twemlow she had tried to assuage the customary asperities of home life so far as possible by a demeanour of generous quick acquiescence 211and she had not entirely failed Yet the girls with all the obtuseness and insensibility of adolescence never thought of giving her the one reward which she desired She sought tremulously to win their intimacy but she sought too late Rose and Milly simply ignored her diffident advances and even Ethel was not responsive Leonora had trained up her children as she herself had been trained She saw her error only when it could not be retrieved The dear but transient vision of four women who had no secrets from each other who understood each other was finally dissolved
Amid the secret desolation of a life which however was not without love amid her vain regrets for an irrecoverable youth and her horror of the approach of age amid the empty lassitudes which apparently were all that remained of the excitement caused by Arthur Twemlows presence Leonora found a mournful and sweet pleasure in imagining that she had a son This son combined the best qualities of Harry Burgess and Fred Ryley She made him tall as herself handsome as herself and like herself elegant Shrewd clever and passably virtuous he was nevertheless distinctly capable of follies but he told her everything even the worst and though sometimes she frowned he smiled away the frown He 212adored her he appreciated all the feminine in her he yielded to her whims he kissed her chin and her wrist held her sunshade opened doors for her allowed her to beat him at tennis and deliciously frightened her by driving her very fast round corners in a very high dogcart And if occasionally she said I am not as young as I was Gerald he always replied Oh rot mater
When Ethel or Milly remarked at breakfast as they did now and then that Mr Twemlow had not fulfilled his promise of writing Leonora would answer evenly No I expect hes forgotten us And she would go and live with her son for a little
She summoned this Gerald—and it was for the last time—as she stood irresolutely waiting for her husband at the door of the ladies cloakroom in the Town Hall She was dressed in black mousseline de soie The corsage which fitted loosely except at the waist and the shoulders where it was closely confined was not too low but it disclosed the beautiful diminutive rondures above the armpits and behind the fine hollow of her back The sleeves were long and full with tight wrists ending in black lace A band of pale pink silk covered with white lace wandered up one sleeve crossed her breast in strict con213formity with the top of the corsage and wandered down the other sleeve at the armpits below the rondures this band was punctuated with a pink rose An extremely narrow black velvet ribbon clasped her neck From the belt which was pink the full skirt ran down in a thousand perpendicular pleats The effect of the loose corsage and of the belt on Leonoras perfect figure was to make her look girlish ingenuous immaculate and with a womans instinct she heightened the effect by swinging her programme restlessly on its ivorytinted cord
They had arrived somewhat late owing partly to Johns indecision and partly to an accident with Roses costume On reaching the Town Hall not only Ethel and Milly but Rose also had deserted Leonora eagerly impatiently as ducklings scurry into a pond they passed through the cloakroom in a moment Rose first Rose was human that evening Leonora did not mind she anticipated the dance with neither joy nor melancholy hoping nothing from it in her mood of neutral calm John was talking with David Dain at the entrance to the gentlemens cloakroom further down the corridor Presently old Mr Hawley the doctor at Hillport joined the other two and then Dain moved away leaving John and the doctor in conversation Dain 214approached and saluted his clients wife with characteristic sheepishness
Large company I believe he said awkwardly In evening dress he was always particularly awkward
She smiled kindly on him thinking the while what a clumsy and objectionable fat little man he was She knew he admired her and would have given much to dance with her but she did not care for his heavy eyes and she despised him because he could not screw himself up to demand a place on her programme
Yes very large company I believe he said again moving about nervously on his toes
Do you know how many invitations she asked
No I dont
Dain John called out come and listen to this And the lawyer escaped from her presence like a schoolboy running out of school
What men she thought bitterly standing neglected with all her charm and all her distinction What chivalry What courtliness What style Her son belonged to a different race of beings
Down the corridor came Harry Burgess deep in converse with a male friend the two were walking quickly She did not choose to greet 215them waiting there alone and so she deliberately turned and put her head within the curtains of the cloakroom as if to speak to some one inside
Twemlow was saying——
It seemed to her that Harry in passing had uttered that phrase to his companion She flushed and shook from head to foot Then she reflected that Twemlow was a name common to dozens of people in the Five Towns She bit her lip surprised and angered at her own agitation At the same time she remembered—and why should she remember—some gossip of Johns to the effect that Harry Burgess was under a cloud at the Bank because he had gone to London by a daytrip on the previous Thursday without leave London perhaps
Am I forty—or fourteen she contemptuously asked herself
She heard John and Dain laugh loudly and the jolly voice of the old doctor Come along into the refreshmentroom for a minute Determined not to linger another moment for these boors she moved into the corridor
At the end of the vista of red carpet and gasjets rose the grand staircase and on the lowest stair stood Arthur Twemlow She had begun to traverse the corridor and she could not stop now and fifty feet lay between them
216Oh her heart cried in the intolerable spasm of a swift and mysterious convulsion Why do you thus torture me Every step was an agony
He moved towards her and she noticed that he was extremely pale They met His hand found hers Then it was that she perceived with a passionate gratitude how heaven had been watching over her If John had not hesitated about coming if her daughters had not deserted her in the cloakroom if the old doctor had not provided himself with a new supply of naughty stories if indeed everything had not occurred exactly as it had occurred—she would have been forced to undergo in the presence of witnesses the shock which she had just experienced and she would have died She felt that in those seconds she had endured emotion to the last limit of her capacity She traced a providence even in Harrys chance phrase which had warned her and so broken the force of the stroke
Why cruel one did you play this trick on me Can you not see what I suffer It was her sad glittering eyes that reproachfully appealed to him
Did I know what would happen his answered Am I not equally a victim
217She smiled pensively and her lips murmured Well wonders will never cease
Such were the first words
I found I had to come back to London he was soon explaining And I met young Burgess at the Empire on Thursday night and he told me about this affair and gave me a ticket and so I thought as I had been at the opera I might as well—— He hesitated
Have you seen the girls she inquired
He had not
On the flowerbordered staircase her foot slipped she felt like a convalescent trying to walk after a long illness Arthur with a silent questioning gesture offered his arm
Yes please she said gladly She wished not to say it but she said it and the next instant he was supporting her up the steps Anything might happen now she thought the most impossible things might come to pass
At the top of the staircase they paused They could hear the music faintly through closed doors They had the precious illusion of being aloof apart separated from the world sufficient to themselves and gloriously sufficient Then some one opened the doors from within the sound of the music suddenly freed rushed out and smote them and they entered the ballroom 218She was acutely conscious of her beauty and of the distinction of his blanched stern face
The floor was thronged by entwined couples who under the rhythmic domination of the music glided and revolved in the elaborate pattern of a mazurka With their rapt gaze and their rigid bodies floating smoothly over a hidden mechanism of flying feet they seemed to be the victims of some enchantment of which the music was only a mode and which led them enthralled through endless curves of infallible beauty and grace Form colour movement melody and the voluptuous galvanism of delicate contacts were all combined in this unique ritual of the dance this strange convention whose significance emerged from one mystery deeper than the fundamental notes of the bassfiddle and lost itself in another more light than the sudden flash of a shirtfront or the tremor of a lock of hair The goddess reigned And round about the hall the guardians of decorum the enemies of Aphrodite enchanted too watched with the simplicity of doves the great Aphrodisian festival blind to the eternal verities of a satin slipper a drooping eyelash a parted lip
The music ceased the spell was lifted for a time And while old alliances were being dis219solved and new ones formed in the eager promiscuity of this interval all remarked proudly on the success of the evening in the gleam of every eye the sway of the goddess was acknowledged Romance was justified Life itself was justified The shopgirl who had put ten thousand stitches into the ruching of her crimson skirt well symbolised the human attitude that night As leaning heavily on a mans arm she crossed the floor under the blazing chandelier she secretly exulted in each stitch of her incredible labour Two hours and she would be back in the cold celibate bedroom littered with the shabby realities of existence; and the spotted glass would mirror her lugubrious yawn Eight hours and she would be in the dreadful shop tying on the black apron The crimson skirt would never look the same again such rare blossoms fade too soon And in exchange for the toil the fatigue and the distressing reaction what had she won She could not have said what she had won but she knew that it was worth the ruinous cost—this bright fallacy this fleeting chimera this delusive ecstasy this shadow and counterfeit of bliss which the goddess vouchsafed to her communicants
So thick and confused was the crowd that Leonora and Arthur having inserted themselves 220into a corner near the west door escaped the notice of any of their friends They were as solitary there as on the landing outside But Leonora saw quite near in another corner Ethel talking to Fred Ryley she noticed how awkward Fred looked in his new dresssuit and she liked him for his awkwardness it seemed to her that Ethel was very beautiful Arthur pointed out Rose who was standing up with the lady member of the School Board Then Leonora caught sight of Millicent in the distance handing her programme to the conductor of the opera she recalled the notorious boast of the conductor that he never knowingly danced with a bad dancer whatever her fascinations Always when they met at a ball the conductor would ask Leonora for a couple of waltzes and would lead her out with an air of saying to the company Now see what fine dancing is Like herself he danced with the frigidity of a professor She wondered whether Arthur could dance really well
The placard by the orchestra said Extra
Shall we Arthur whispered
He made a way for her through the outer fringe of people to the middle space where the couples were forming Her last thoughts as she gave him her hand were thoughts halfpitiful and halfscornful of John David Dain and 221the doctor brutishly content in the refreshmentroom
There stole out troubling the expectant air softly alluringly invocatively the first warning notes of that unique classic of the ballroom that extraordinary composition which more than any other work of art unites all western nations in a common delight which is adored equally by profound musicians and by the lightest cocottes and which unscathed and splendid still miraculously survives the deadly ordeal of eternal perfunctory reiterance the masterpiece of Johann Strauss
Why Leonora exclaimed her excitement straining impatiently in the leash The Blue Danube
He laughed quietly gay
While the chords with tantalising pauses and deliberation approached the magic moment of the waltz itself she was conscious that his hold of her became firmer and more assertive and she surrendered to an overmastering influence as one surrenders to chloroform desperately but luxuriously
And when at the invitation of the melody the whole company in the centre of the floor broke into movement and the spell was resumed she lost all remembrance of that which had passed and all apprehension of that which was to come 222She lived passionately and yet languorously in the vivid present Her eyes were level with his shoulder and they looked with an entranced gaze along his arm seeing automatically the faces the lights and the colours which swam in a rapid confused procession across their field of vision She did not reason nor recognise These fleeting images appearing and disappearing on the horizon of Arthurs elbow produced no effect on her She had no thoughts Her entire being was absorbed in a transport of obedience to the beat of the music and to Arthurs directing pressures She was happy but her bliss had in it that element of stinging pain of intolerable anticipation which is seldom absent from a felicity too intense Surely I shall sink down and die said her heart seeming to faint at the joyous crises of the music which rose and fell in tides of varying rapture Nevertheless she was determined to drink the cup slowly to taste every drop of that sweet and excruciating happiness She would not utterly abandon herself The fear of inanition was only a wayward pretence after all and her strong nature cried out for further tests to prove its fortitude and its power of dissimulation As the band slipped into the final section of the waltz she wilfully dragged the time deepening a little the curious 223superficial languor which concealed her secrets and at the same time increasing her consciousness of Arthurs control She dreaded now that what had been intolerable should cease she wished ardently to avert the end The glare of lights the separate sounds of the instruments the slurring of feet on the smooth floor the lineaments of familiar faces all the multitudinous and picturesque detail of gyrating humanity around her—these phenomena forced themselves on her unwilling perception and she tried to push them back and to spend every faculty in savouring the ecstasy of that one physical presence which was so close so enveloping and so inexplicably dear But in vain in vain The band rioted through the last bars of the waltz a strange disconcerting silence and inertia supervened and Arthur loosed her
As she sat down on the cane chair which Arthur had found Leonoras characteristic ease of manner deserted her She felt conspicuous and embarrassed and she could neither maintain her usual cold nonchalant glance in examining the room nor look at Arthur in a natural way She had the illusion that every one must be staring at her with amazed curiosity Yet her furtive searching eye could not discover a single 224person except Arthur who seemed to notice her existence All were preoccupied that night with immediate neighbours
Will you come down into the refreshmentroom Arthur asked She observed with annoyance that he too was confused nervous and still very pale
She shook her head without meeting his gaze She wished above all things to behave simply and sincerely to speak in her ordinary voice and to use familiar phrases But she could not On the contrary she was seized with a strong impulse to say to him entreatingly Leave me as though she were a person on the stage She thought of other phrases such as Please go away and Do you mind leaving me for a while but her tongue somehow insisting on the melodramatic would not utter these
Leave me She was frightened by her own words and added hastily with the most seductive smile that her lips had everframed Do you mind
I shall call tomorrow he said anxiously almost gruffly Shall you be in
She nodded and he left her she did not watch him depart
May I have the honour gracious lady
It was the conductor of the opera who 225addressed her in his even apparently sarcastic tones
Im afraid I must rest a bit she said smiling quite naturally Ive hurt my foot a little—Oh its nothing its nothing But I must sit still for a bit
She could not comprehend why unintentionally and without design she should have told this stupid lie and told it so persuasively She foresaw how the tedious consequences of the fiction might continue throughout the evening For a moment she had the idea of announcing a sprained ankle and of returning home at once But the thought of old Dr Hawleys presence in the building deterred her She perceived that her foot must get gradually better and that she must be resigned
Oh mamma cried Rose coming up to her Just fancy Mr Twemlow being back again But why did you let him leave
Has he gone
Yes He just saw me on the stairs and told me he must catch the last car to Knype
Our dance I think Miss Rose said a young man with a gardenia and Rose flushed and sparkling was carried off The ball proceeded
John Stanway had a singular capacity for not 226enjoying himself on those social occasions when to enjoy ones self is a duty to the company But this evening as the hour advanced he showed the symptoms of a sharp attack of gaiety such as visited him from time to time He and Dr Hawley and Dain formed an ebullient centre of high spirits and they upheld the ancient traditions they professed a liking for oldfashioned dances and for oldfashioned ways of dancing the steps which modern enthusiasm for the waltz had not extinguished And they found an appreciable number of followers The organisers of the ball the upholders of correctness punctilio and the mode, fretted and fought against the antagonistic influence Ass said the conductor of the opera bitterly when Harry Burgess told him that Stanway had suggested Sir Roger de Coverley for an extra I wonder what his wife thinks of him Sir Roger de Coverley was not danced but twenty or thirty late stayers with Stanway and Dain in charge crossed hands in a circle and sang Auld Lang Syne at the close It was one of those incredible things that can only occur between midnight and cockcrow During this revolting rite the conductor and his friends sought sanctuary in the refreshmentroom Leonora Ethel and Milly were also there but Rose and the ladymember of the School 227Board had remained upstairs to sing Auld Lang Syne
Now girls said Stanway with loud good humour invading the select apartment with his followers time to go Carpenters been waiting halfanhour Your foot all right again Nora
Quite she replied Are you really ready
She had so interminably waited that she could not believe the evening to be at length actually finished
They all exchanged adieux Stanway and his cronies effusively the opposing and outraged faction with a certain fine acrimony Goodnight Fred said John throwing a backward patronising glance at Ryley who had strolled uneasily into the room The young man paused before replying Goodnight he said stiffly and his demeanour indicated Do not patronise me too much Fred could not dance but he had audaciously sat out four dances with Ethel at this his first ball and the serious young man had the strange agreeable sensation of feeling a dog He dared not however accompany Ethel to the carriage as Harry Burgess accompanied Millicent Harry had been partially restored to favour again during the latter half of the entertainment just in time to prevent him from getting tipsy The fact was that Millicent had vaguely expected in 228view of her position as prima donna to be the belle of the ball but there had been no belle and Millicent was put to the inconvenience of discovering that she could do nothing without footlights
I asked Twemlow to come up tomorrow night Nora said John still elated turning on the boxseat as the waggonette rattled briskly over the paved crossing at the top of Oldcastle Street
She mumbled something through her furs
And is he coming asked Rose
He said hed try to John lighted a cigar
Hes very queer said Millicent
How Rose aggressively demanded
Well imagine him going off like that Hes always going off suddenly Millicent stopped and then added He only danced with mother But hes a good dancer
I should think he was Ethel murmured roused from lethargy Isnt he just mother
Leonora mumbled again
Your mothers knocked up said John drily These late nights dont suit her So you reckon Mr Twemlows a good dancer eh
No one spoke further John threw his cigar into the road
Under the rug Leonora could feel the knees 229of all her daughters as they sat huddled and limp with fatigue in the small body of the waggonette Her shoulders touched Ethels and every one of Millys fidgety movements communicated itself to her Mother and children were so close that they could not have been closer had they lain in the same grave And yet the girls and John too had no slightest suspicion how far away the mother was from them how blind they were how amazingly they had been deceived They deemed Leonora to be like themselves the victim of reaction and weariness so drowsy that even the joltings of the carriage could not prevent a doze She marvelled she could not help marvelling that her spiritual detachment should remain unnoticed the phenomenon frightened her as something full of strange risks Was it possible that none had caught a glimpse of the intense illumination and activity of her brain burning and labouring there so conspicuously amid the other brains sombre and dormant And was it possible that the girls had observed the qualities of Arthurs dancing and had observed nothing else Common sense tried to reassure her and did not quite succeed Her attitude resembled that of a person who leans against a firm rail over the edge of a precipice there is no danger but the precipice is so deep that he fears 230and though the fear is a torture the sinister magnetism of the abyss forbids him to withdraw She lived again in the waltz in the gliding motions of it the delicious fluctuations of the reverse the long trancelike union the instinctive avoidances of other contact She whispered the music endlessly repeating those poignant and voluptuous phrases which linger in the memory of all the world And she recalled and reconstituted Arthurs physical presence and the emanating charm of his disposition and dwelt on them long and long Instead of lessening the secret commotion within her increased and continued to increase While brooding with feverish joy over the immediate past her mind reached forward and existed in the appalling and fatal moment for whose reality however her eagerness could scarcely wait when she should see him once more And it asked unanswerable questions about his surprising return from New York and his pallor and the tremor in his voice and his swift departure Suddenly she knew that she was planning to have the girls out of the house tomorrow afternoon between four and five oclock Her spine shivered she grew painfully hot and tears rushed to her eyes She pitied herself profoundly She said that she did not know what was the matter with her or what was going to happen She could 231not give names to things She only felt that she was too violently alive
Now missis John roused her The carriage had stopped and he had already descended She got out last and Carpenter drove away while John was still fumbling in his hippocket for the latchkey The night was humid and very dark Leonora and the girls stood waiting on the gravel and John groped his way into the blackness of the portico to unfasten the door A faint gleam from the hallgas came through the leaded fanlight This scarcely perceptible glow and the murmur of Johns expletives were all that came to the women from the mystery of the house The key grated in the lock and the door opened
G——d d——n Stanway exclaimed distinctly with fierce annoyance He had fallen headlong into the hall and his silk hat could be heard hopping towards the staircase
Pa Milly protested shocked
John sprang up fuming turned the gas on to the full and rushed back to the doorway
Ah he shouted I knew it was a tramp lying there Get up Is the beggar asleep
They all bent down startled into gravity to examine a form which lay in the portico nearly parallel with the step and below it
232Its Uncle Meshach said Ethel Oh mother
Then my aunts had another attack cried John and hes come up to tell us and—Milly run for Carpenter
It seemed to Leonora as with sudden awe she vaguely figured an august and capricious power which conferred experience on mortals like a wonderful gift that that bestowing hand was never more full than when it had given most
233
CHAPTER IX
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
While Prince tethered summarily outside the stabledoor with all his harness on was trying in vain to understand this singular caprice on the part of Carpenter Carpenter and the head of the house lifted Uncle Meshachs form and carried it into the hall The women watched ceasing their wild useless questions
Into the breakfastroom on the sofa said John breathing hard to the man
No no Leonora intervened you had better take him upstairs at once to Ethel and Millys bedroom
The procession undignified and yet impressive came to a halt and Carpenter who was holding Meshachs feet glanced with canine anxiety from his master to his mistress
But look here Nora John began
Yes father upstairs said Rose cutting him short
Preoccupied with the cumbrous weight of 234Meshachs shoulders John could not maintain the discussion he hesitated and then Carpenter moved towards the stairs The small dangling body seemed to say I am indifferent but it is perhaps as well that you have done arguing
Run over to Dr Hawleys and ask him to come across at once John instructed Carpenter when they had steered Uncle Meshach round the twist of the staircase and insinuated him through a doorway and laid him at length in his overcoat and his muffler and his quaint boots on Ethels virginal bed
But has the doctor come home Jack Leonora inquired
Of course he has said John He drove up with Dain and they passed us at Shawport Didnt you hear me call out to them
Oh yes she agreed
Then John hatless but in his ulster and the women hooded and shawled drew round the bed but Ethel and Milly stood at the foot The inanimate form embarrassed them all made them feel selfconscious and afraid to meet one another's eyes
Better loosen his things said Leonora and Roses fingers were instantly at work to help her
Uncle Meshach was white rigid and stone235cold the stiff Myatt jaw was set the eyes wide open looked upwards and strangely outwards in a fixed stare And his audience thought as they gazed in a sort of foolish astonishment at the puny grotesque and unfamiliar thing Is this really Uncle Meshach John lifted the wrist and felt for the pulse but he could distinguish no beat and he shook his head accordingly Try the heart mother Rose suggested and Leonora after penetrating beneath garment after garment placed her hand on Meshachs icy and tranquil breast And she too shook her head Then John with an air of finality took out his gold repeater and when he had polished the glass he held it to Uncle Meshachs parted lips Can you see any moisture on it he asked taking it to the light but none of them could detect the slightest dimness
I do wish the doctor would be quick said Milly
Doctorll be no use John remarked gruffly returning to gaze again at the immovable face Except for an inquest he added
I think some one had better walk down to Church Street at once and tell Aunt Hannah that uncle is here said Leonora Perhaps she is ill Anyhow shell be very anxious But she faltered before the complicated problem Rose 236go and wake Bessie and ask her if uncle called here during the evening and tell her to get up at once and light the gasstove and put some water on to boil and then to light a fire here
And whos to go to Church Street John asked quickly
Leonora looked for an instant at Rose as the girl left the room She felt that on such an occasion she could more easily spare Ethels sweet eagerness to help than Roses almost sinister selfpossession Ethel and Milly she said promptly At least they can run on first And be very careful what you say to Aunt Hannah my dears And one of you must hurry back at once in any case by the road not by the fields and tell us what has happened
Rose came in to say that Bessie and the other servants had seen nothing of Uncle Meshach and that they were all three getting up and then she disappeared into the kitchen Ethel and Milly departed a little scared a little regretful but inspirited by the dreadful charm and fascination of the whole inexplicable adventure
Aunt Hannahs had another attack depend on it said John thats it
I hope not Leonora murmured perfunctorily Now that she had broken the spell of futile 237inactivity which the discovery of Uncle Meshachs body seemed for a few dire moments to have laid upon them she was more at ease
I fancy youd better go down there yourself as soon as the doctors been John continued Youre perhaps more likely to be useful there than here What do you think
She looked at him under her eyelids saying nothing and reading all his mind He had obstinately determined that Uncle Meshach was dead and he was striving to conceal both his satisfaction on that account and his rapidly growing anxiety as to the condition of Aunt Hannah His terrible lack of frankness that instinct for the devious and the underhand which governed his entire existence struck her afresh and seemed to devastate her heart She felt that she could have tolerated in her husband any vice with less effort than that one vice which was specially his that vice so contemptible and odious so destructive of every noble and generous sentiment Her silent measured indignation fed itself on almost nothing—on a mere word a mere inflection of his voice a single transient gleam of his guilty eye And though she was right by unerring intuition John could he have seen into her soul might have been excused for demanding What have I said what have I done to deserve this scorn
238Rose returned bearing materials for a fire she had changed her Liberty dress for the dark severe frock of her studious hours and she had an irritating air of being perfectly equal to the occasion John having thrown off his ulster endeavoured to assist her in lighting the fire but she at once proved to him that his incapacity was a hindrance to her whereupon he wondered what in the name of goodness Carpenter and the doctor were doing to be so long Leonora began to tidy the room which bore witness to the regardless frenzy of anticipation with which its occupants had cast aside the soiled commonplaces of life six hours before
But look Rose cried suddenly examining Uncle Meshach anew after the fire was lighted
What John and Leonora demanded together rushing to the bed
His lips werent like that the girl asserted with eagerness
All three gazed long at the impassive face
Of course they were said John coldly discouraging Leonora made no remark
The unblinking eyes of Uncle Meshach continued to stare upwards and outwards indifferently interested in the ceiling Outside could be heard the creaking of stairs and the affrighted whisper of the maids as they descended in deshabillé from 239their attics at the bidding of this unconscious cynical and sardonic enigma on the bed
His heart is beating faintly
Old Dr Hawley dropped the antique stethoscope back into the pocket of his tight dress coat and still bending over Uncle Meshach but turning slightly towards John and Leonora smiled with all his invincible jollity
Is it by Jove John exclaimed
You thought he was dead said the doctor beaming
Leonora nodded
Well he isnt the doctor announced with curt cheerfulness
Thats good said John
But I dont think he can get over it the doctor concluded with undiminished brightness his eyes twinkling
While he spoke he was busy with the hot water and the cloths which Leonora and Rose had produced immediately upon demand In a few minutes Uncle Meshach was covered almost from head to foot with cloths drenched in hot mustardandwater he had hotwater bags under his arms and he was swathed in a huge blanket
There said the rotund doctor You must keep that up and Ill send a stimulant at once 240I cant stop now not another minute I was called to an obstetric case just as I started out Ill come back the moment Im free
What is it—this thing John inquired
What is it the doctor repeated genially Ill tell you what it is Put your nose there He indicated Uncle Meshachs mouth Do you notice that ammoniacal smell Thats due to uraemia a sequel of Brights disease
Brights disease John muttered
Brights disease affirmed the doctor dwelling on the famous and striking syllables Your uncle is the typical instance of the man who has never been ill in his life He walks up a little slope or up some steps to a friends house and just as he is lifting his hand to the knocker he has a convulsion and falls down unconscious Thats Brights disease Never been ill in his life Not so far as he knew Not so far as he knew Nearly all you Myatts had weak kidneys Do you remember your greatuncle Ebenezer Youve sent down to Miss Myatt you say Good Perhaps he was lying on your steps for two or three hours He may pull round He may We must hope so
The doctor put on his overcoat and his cap with the earflaps and after a final glance at the patient and a friendly reassuring smile at 241Leonora he went slowly to the door Girth and good humour and funny stories had something to do with his great reputation in Bursley and Hillport But he possessed shrewdness and sagacity he belonged to a dynasty of doctors and he was deeply versed in the social traditions of the district Men consulted him because their grandfathers had consulted his father and because there had always been a Dr Hawley in Bursley and because he was acquainted with the pathological details of their ancestral history on both sides of the hearth His patients indeed were not individuals but families There were cleverer doctors in the place doctors of more refined appearance and manners doctors less monotonously and loudly gay but old Hawley with his knowledge of pedigrees and his unique instinctive sympathy with the idiosyncrasies of local character could hold his own against the most assertive young MD that ever came out of Edinburgh to monopolise the Five Towns
Can you send some one round with me for the medicine he asked in the doorway Happen youll come yourself John
There was a momentary hesitation
Ill come doctor said Rose And then you can give me all your instructions Mother must stay here She completely ignored her father
242Do my dear come by all means And the doctor beamed again suddenly with the maximum of cheerfulness
Meshach had given no sign of life his eyes staring upwards and outwards were still unchangeably fixed on the same portion of the ceiling He ignored equally the nonchalant and expert attentions of the doctor the false solicitude of John Leonoras passionate anxiety and Roses calm selfconfidence He treated the fomentations with the apathy which might have been expected from a man who for fifty years had been accustomed to receive the meek skilled service of women in august silence One could almost have detected in those eyes a glassy and profound secret amusement at the disturbance which he had caused—a humorous appreciation of all the fuss the maids with their hair down their backs bending and whispering over a stove Ethel and Milly trudging scared through the nocturnal streets Rose talking with demure excitement to old Hawley in his aromatic surgery John officiously carrying kettles to and fro and issuing orders to Bessie in the passage Leonora cast violently out of one whirlpool into another and some unknown expectant terrified pair wondering why the doctor who had been warned months before should thus culpably neglect their 243urgent summons As he lay there so grim and derisive and solitary so fatigued with days and nights so used up so steeped in experience, and so contemptuously unconcerned he somehow baffled all the efforts of blankets cloths and bags to make his miserable frame look ridiculous He had a majesty which subdued his surroundings And in this room hitherto sacred to the charming mysteries of girlhood his cadaverous presence forced the skirts and petticoats on Millys bed and the disordered apparatus on the dressingtable and the scented soaps on the washstand and the row of tiny boots and shoes which Leonora had arranged near the wardrobe to apologise pathetically and wistfully for their very existence.
Is that enough mustard John inquired idly
Yes said Leonora
She realised—but not in the least because he had asked a banal question about mustard—that he was perfectly insensible to all spiritual significances She had been aware of it for many years yet the fact touched her now more sharply than ever It seemed to her that she must cry out in a long mournful cry Cant you see cant you feel And once again her husband might justifiably have demanded What have I done this time
244I wish one of those girls would come back from Church Street he burst out frowning Theyre here He became excited as he listened to light rapid footsteps on the stair But it was Rose who entered
Heres the medicine mother said Rose eagerly She was flushed with running Its chloric ether and nitrate of potash a highly diffusible stimulant And theres a chance that sooner or later it may put him into a perspiration But it will be worse than useless if the hot applications arent kept up the doctor said You must raise his head and give it him in a spoon in very small doses
And then Meshach impassively submitted to the handling of his head and his mouth He gurgled faintly in accepting the medicine and soon his temples and the corners of his lips showed a very slight perspiration But though the doses were repeated and the fomentations assiduously maintained no further result occurred save that Meshachs eyes according to the shifting of his head perused new portions of the ceiling
As the futile minutes passed John grew more and more restless He was obliged to admit to himself that Uncle Meshach was not dead but he felt absolutely sure that he would never revive 245Had not the doctor said as much And he wanted desperately to hear that Aunt Hannah still lived and to take every measure of precaution for her continuance in this world The whole of his future might depend upon the hazard of the next hour
Look here Nora he said protestingly while Rose was on one of her journeys to the kitchen Its evidently not much use you stopping here whereas theres no knowing what hasnt happened down at Church Street
Do you mean you wish me to go down there she asked coldly
Well I leave it to your common sense he retorted
Rose appeared
Your father thinks I ought to go down to Church Street said Leonora
What And leave uncle Rose added nothing to this question but proceeded with her tasks
Certainly John insisted
Leonora was conscious of an acute resentment against her husband The idea of her leaving Uncle Meshach at such a crisis seemed to her to be positively wicked Had not John heard what Rose said to the doctor Mother must stay here Had he not heard that But of course 246he desired that Uncle Meshach should die Yes every word every gesture of his in the sickroom was an involuntary expression of that desire
Why dont you go yourself father Rose demanded of him bluntly after a pause
Simply because if there is any illness I shouldnt be any use John glared at his daughter
Then quite suddenly Leonora thought how vain how pitiful how unseemly were these acrimonious conflicts of opinion in presence of the strange and aweinspiring riddle in the blanket An impulse seized her to give way and she found a dozen reasons why she should desert Uncle Meshach for Aunt Hannah
Can you manage she asked Rose doubtfully
Oh yes mother we can manage answered Rose with an exasperating manufactured sweetness of tone
Tell Carpenter to put the horse in John suggested I expect hes waiting about in the kitchen
No said Leonora Ill pin my skirt up and walk I shall be half way there before hes ready to start
When Leonora had departed John redoubled his activity as a nurse Theres no object in 247changing the cloths as often as that said Rose But his suspense forbade him to keep still Rose annoyed him excessively and the nervous energy which should have helped towards selfcontrol was expended in concealing that annoyance He felt as though he should go mad unless something decisive happened very soon To his surprise just after the hall clock which was always kept halfanhour fast had sounded three through the dark passages of the apprehensive house Rose left the room He was alone with what remained of Uncle Meshach He moved the blanket and touched the cloth which lay on Meshachs heart Not too hot that he said aloud Taking the cloth he walked to the fire where was a large saucepan full of nearly boiling water He picked up the lid of the saucepan dropped it crossed over to the washstand with a brusque movement and plunged the cloth into the cold water of the ewer Holding it there he turned and gazed in a sort of abstract meditation at Uncle Meshach who steadily ignored him He was possessed by a genuine feeling of righteous indignation against his uncle He drew the cloth from the ewer squeezed it a little and approached the bed again And as he stood over Meshach with the cloth in his hand he saw his wife in the doorway He knew in an instant that his own face had frightened 248her and prevented her from saying what she was about to say
How you startled me Nora he exclaimed with his surpassing genius for escaping from an apparently fatal situation
She ran up to the bed Dont keep uncle uncovered like that she said put it on And she took the cloth from his hand Why she cried its like ice What on earth are you doing Wheres Rose
I was just taking it off he replied What about aunt
I met the girls down the road she said Your aunt is dead
A few minutes later Uncle Meshachs rigid frame suffered a convulsion the whole surface of his skin sweated abundantly his eyes wavered closed and opened again his mouth made the motion of swallowing He had come back from unconsciousness He was no longer an enigma wrapped in supercilious and inflexible calm but a sick shrivelled little man so pitiably prostrate that his condition drew the sympathy out of Leonora with a sharp violent pain as very cold metal burns the fingers He could not even whisper he could only look Soon afterwards Dr Hawley returned explaining that the 249anxiety of a husband about to be a father had called him too soon by several hours The doctor who had been informed of Aunt Hannahs death as he entered the house said at once on seeing him that Uncle Meshach had had a marvellous escape Then when he had succoured the patient further he turned rather formidably to Leonora
I want to speak to you he said and he led her out of the room leaving Rose Ethel and John in charge of Meshach
What is it doctor she asked him plaintively on the landing
Which is your bedroom Show it me he demanded She opened a door and they both went in Ill light the gas he said doing so And now he proceeded youll kindly retire to bed instantly Mr Myatt is out of danger He smiled warmly just as he had smiled when he predicted that Meshach would probably not recover
But doctor Leonora protested
Instantly he said forcing her gently on to the sofa at the foot of the two beds
But some one ought to go down to Church Street to look after things she began
Church Street can wait Theres no hurry at Church Street now
250And uncle hasnt been told yet Im not at all overtired doctor
Yes mother dear you are and you must do as the doctor orders It was Ethel who had come into the room she touched Leonoras arm caressingly
And where are you girls to sleep The spare room isnt——
Oh mother— Just listen to her doctor said Ethel stroking her mothers hand as though she and the doctor were two old and sage persons and Leonora was a small child
They think Im ill They think Im going to collapse The idea struck her suddenly But Im not Im quite well and my brain is perfectly clear And anyhow Im sure I cant sleep She said aloud It wouldnt be any use I shouldnt sleep
Ah Ill attend to that Ill attend to that the doctor laughed Ethel help your mother to bed He departed
This is really most absurd Leonora reflected Its ridiculous However Im only doing it to oblige them
Before she was entirely undressed Rose entered with a powder in a white paper and a glass of hot milk
You are to swallow this mother and then 251drink this Here Eth hold the glass a second
And Leonora accepted the powder from Rose and the milk from Ethel as they stood side by side in front of her Great waves seemed to surge through her brain In walking to the bed she saw herself all white in the mirror of the wardrobe
My face looks as if it was covered with flour she said to Ethel with a short laugh It did not occur to her that she was pale Dont forget to—— But she had forgotten what Ethel was not to forget Her head reeled as it lay firmly on the pillow The waves were waves of sound now and they developed into a rhythm a tune She had barely time to discover that the tune was the Blue Danube Waltz and that she was dancing when the whole world came to an end
She awoke to feel the radiant influence of the afternoon sun through the green blinds Impregnated with a delicious languor she slowly stretched out her arms and lifting her head gazed first at the intricate tracery of the lace on her silk nightgown and then into the silent dreamy spaces of the room Everything was in perfect order she guessed that Ethel must have trod softly to make it tidy before leaving her hours ago 252Johns bed was turned down and his pyjamas laid out with all Bessies accustomed precision Presently she noticed on her nighttable a sheet of notepaper on which had been written in pencil in large letters Ring the bell before getting up She could not be sure whether the hand was Ethels or Roses Oh she thought how good my girls are She was quite well quite restored and slightly hungry And she was also calm content ready to commence existence anew
I suppose I had better humour them she murmured and she rang the bell
Bessie entered The treasure was irreproachably neat and prim in her black and white
What time is it Bessie Leonora inquired
Its a straightup three maam
Then I must have slept for eleven hours How is Mr Myatt going on
Bessie dropped her hands and smiled benevolently Oh Hes much better maam And when the doctor told him about poor Miss Myatt maam he just said the funeral must be on Saturday because he didnt like Sunday funerals and it wouldnt do to wait till Monday He didnt say nothing else And he keeps on telling us he shall be well enough to go to the funeral and hes sent master down to Guests 253in St Lukes Square to order it and the hearse is to have two horses but not the coaches maam Hes asleep just now maam and Im watching him but Miss Rose is resting on Miss Millys bed in case so I can come in here for a minute or two He told the doctor and master that Miss Myatt was took with one of them attacks at halfpast eleven oclock and he went for Dr Adams as lives at the top of Oldcastle Street Dr Adams wasnt in and then he saw a cab—it must have been coming from the ball maam but Mr Myatt didnt know as there was any ball—and he drove up to Hillport for Dr Hawley him being the family doctor And then he said he felt badlike and he thought hed come here and send master across the way for Dr Hawley And he got out of the cab and paid the cabman and then he doesnt remember no more Wasnt it dreadful maam I dont believe he rightly knew what he was doing the poor old gentleman
Leonora listened Where are Miss Ethel and Miss Milly she asked
Master said they was to go to Oldcastle to order mourning maam Theyve but just gone And master said he should be back himself about six He never slept a wink maam nor even sat down He just had his bath and Miss Ethel crept in here for his clothes
254And have you been to bed Bessie
Me No maam What should I go to bed for Im as well as well maam Miss Milly slept in Miss Roses bedroom for a bit and Miss Ethel on the sofy in the drawingroom—not as you might call that sleeping Miss Rose said you was to have some tea before you got up maam Shall I tell cook to get it now
I really think I should prefer to have it downstairs Bessie thanks said Leonora
Very well maam But Miss Rose said——
Yes but I will have it downstairs In threequarters of an hour say
Very well maam Now is there anything I can do for you maam
While dressing very placidly and deliberately and while thinking upon all the multitudinous things that seemed to have happened in her world during her long slumber Leonora dwelt too upon the extraordinary loving kindness of this hireling who got twenty pounds a year halfaday a week and a day a month On the first of every month Leonora handed to Bessie one paltry sovereign thirteen shillings and the odd fourpence in coppers She wondered fancifully if she would have the effrontery to requite the girl in coin on the next payday and she was filled with a sense of the goodness of humanity And 255then there crossed her mind the recollection that she had caught John in a wicked act on the previous night Yes he had not imposed on her for a moment and she perceived clearly now that murder had been in his heart She was not appalled nor desolated She thought So that is murder that little thing that thing over in a minute It appeared to her that murder in the concrete was less dreadful than murder in the abstract, far less horrible than the strident sound of the word on the lips of a newsboy or the look of it in the Signal She felt dimly that she ought to be shocked unnerved terrified at the prospect of living eating and sleeping with a man who had meant to kill But she could not summon these sensations She merely experienced a kind of pity for John She put the episode away from her as being closed accidental and unimportant Uncle Meshach was alive
A few minutes before four oclock she went quietly into the sickroom Bessie sitting upright between the beds put her finger to her lips Uncle Meshach was asleep on Ethels bed and on the other bed lay Rose also asleep stretched in a negligent attitude but fully dressed and wearing an old black frock that was too tight for her The fire burned brightly
Tea is ready in the drawingroom maam 256Bessie whispered and Mr Twemlow has just called Hes waiting to see you
So you know what has happened to us
Yes he said I met your husband on St Lukes Square But I heard something before that At one oclock a man told me at Knype Station that Mr Myatt had cut his throat on your doorstep I didnt believe it So I called up Twemlow Stanway over the phone and got on to the facts
What things people say she exclaimed
I guess youve stood it very well he remarked gazing at her as with quick sure movements of her gracile hands she poured out the tea
Ah she murmured flushing they sent me to bed I have only just got up
I know exactly when you went to bed he smiled
His tone filled her with satisfaction She had hoped and expected that he would behave naturally that he would not adopt the desolating attitude of gloom prescribed by convention for sympathisers with the bereaved and she was not disappointed He spoke with an easy and cheerful sincerity and she was exquisitely conscious of the flattery implied in that simple direct candour which seemed to say to her You and I have no 257need of convention—we understand each other Perhaps never in her life not even in the wonderful felicities of girlhood had Leonora been more peacefully content than during those moments of calm succeeding stress as she met Arthurs eyes in the intimacy of a fraternal confidence The large room was so tranquil the curtains so white and the sunlight so benignant in the caress of its amber horizontal rays Rose lay asleep upstairs Ethel and Millicent were at Oldcastle John would not return for two hours and she and Arthur were alone together in the middle of the long quiet chamber talking quietly She was happy She had no fear neither for herself nor for him As innocent as Rose and more innocent than Ethel she now regarded the feverish experience of the dance as accidental a thing to be forgotten an episode of which the repetition was merely to be avoided Death and the fear of Death had come suddenly and written over its record in the page of existence Her present sanity and calmness and mild bliss and selfcontrol—these were to last these were the real symptoms of her condition and of Arthurs condition No The memory of the ball did not trouble her it had not troubled her since she awoke after the sedative She had entered the drawingroom without a qualm and the instant of their meeting anticipated on 258the previous night as much in terror as in joy had passed equably and serenely Relying on his strength and exulting in her own she had given him her hand and he had taken it and that was all She knew her native force She knew that she had the precious and rare gift of common sense and she was perfectly convinced that this common sense which had never long deserted her in the past could never permanently desert her in the future She imagined that nothing was stronger than common sense she had small suspicion that in their noblest hours men and women have invariably despised common sense and trampled it underfoot as the most contemptible of human attributes Therefore she was content and unalarmed And she found pleasure even in trifles as for example, that the maid had set two cupsandsaucers and two only the duality struck her as delicious She looked close at Arthurs sagacious shrewd and kindly face with the heavy clipped moustache and the bluish chin and those grey hairs at the sides of the forehead We belong to the same generation he and I she thought eating bread and butter with relish and we are not so very old after all Aunt Hannah was incomparably older ripe for death Who could be profoundly moved by that unimportant that trivial demise 259She felt very sorry for Uncle Meshach but no more than that Such sentiments may have the appearance of callousness but they were the authentic sentiments of Leonora and Leonora was not callous The financial aspect of Aunt Hannahs death as it affected John and herself and the girls and their home did not disturb her She was removed far above finance far above any preoccupation about the latter years as she sat talking quietly and blissfully with Arthur in the drawingroom
Yes she was telling him it was just opposite the ClaytonVernons that I met them
Where the elmtrees spread over the road he questioned
She nodded pleased by his minute interest in her narrative and by his knowledge of the neighbourhood I saw them both a long way off walking quickly under a gaslamp And its very curious but although I was so anxious to know what had happened I couldnt go on to meet them—I was obliged to wait until they came up And they didnt notice me at first and then Ethel shrieked out Oh its mother And Milly said Aunt Hannahs dead mother Is Uncle Meshach dead You cant understand how queer I felt I felt as if Milly would go on asking and asking Is father dead 260Is Bessie dead Is Bran dead Are you dead
I know he said reflectively
She guessed that he envied her the strange nocturnal adventure And her secret pride in the adventure which hitherto she had endeavoured to suppress suddenly became open and legitimate She allowed her face to disclose the thought You see that I too have lived through crises and that I can appreciate how wonderful they are And she proceeded to give him all the details of Aunt Hannahs death as she had learnt them from Ethel and Milly during the walk home through sleeping Hillport how the servant had grown alarmed and had called a neighbour by breaking a bedroom window with a broomstick leaning from Aunt Hannahs window and how the neighbours eldest boy had run for Dr Adams and had caught him in the street just as he was returning home and how Aunt Hannah was gone before the boy came back with Dr Adams and how no one could guess what had happened to Uncle Meshach and no one could suggest what to do until Ethel and Milly knocked at the door
Isnt it all strange Dont you think its strange Leonora demanded
261No he said It seems strange but it isnt really Such things are always happening
Are they She spoke naïvely with a girlish inflection and a girlish gesture
Well of course He smiled gravely and yet humorously And his eyes said What a charming simple thing you are And she liked to think of his superiority over her in experience, knowledge imperturbability breadth of view and all those kindred qualities which women give to the men they admire
They could not talk further on the subject
By the by hows your foot he inquired
My foot
Yes You hurt it last night didnt you after Id gone
She had completely forgotten the trifling fiction until it thus rather startlingly reappeared on his lips She might easily have let it die naturally had she chosen but she could not choose She had a whim to kill it violently romantically
No she said I didnt hurt it
It was your husband was telling me
She went on joyously and fearfully Some one asked me to dance after—after the Blue Danube And I didnt want to I couldnt 262And so I said I had hurt my foot It was just one of those things that one says you know
He was embarrassed he had no remark ready But to preserve appearances he lowered the corners of his lips and glanced at the copper teakettle through halfclosed eyes feigning to suppress a private amusement She was quite aware however that she had embarrassed him And just as a minute earlier she had liked him for his lordly masculine philosophic superiority so now she liked him for that youthful embarrassment She felt that all men were equally childlike to women and that the most adorable were the most childlike How little you understand after all she thought Poor boy I unlatched the door and you dared not push it open You were afraid of committing an indiscretion But I will guide and protect you and protect us both
This was the woman who half an hour ago had been exulting in the adequacy of her common sense Innocent and enchanting creature with the rashness of innocence
I guess I couldnt dance again after the Blue Danube either he said at length boldly
She made no answer perhaps she was a little intimidated but she looked at him with eyes and lips full of latent vivacity
That was why I left he finished firmly 263There was in his tone a hint of that engaging and piquant antagonism which springs up between lovers and dies away he had the air of telling her that since she had invited a confession she was welcome to it
She retreated still admiring and said evenly that the ball had been a great success
Soon afterwards Ethel and Milly unexpectedly entered the room They had put on the formal aspect of dejection which they deemed proper for them but on perceiving that their elders were talking quite naturally they at once abandoned constraint and became natural too From the sight of their unaffected pleasure in seeing Arthur Twemlow again Leonora drew further sustenance for her mood of serene content
Just fancy Mr Twemlow Millicent burst out We walked all the way to Oldcastle and we never thought and no one reminded us Its fathers fault really
What is fathers fault really
Its Thursday afternoon and the shops were all shut We shall have to go tomorrow morning
Ah he said The stores dont shut on Thursday afternoon in New York
Mother will be able to come with us tomorrow morning said Ethel and approaching 264Leonora she asked Are you all right mother
This simple familiar conversation and the free movements of the girls and the graver suavity of Arthur and herself seemed to Leonora to constitute a picture a scene of mysterious and profound charm
Arthur rose to depart The girls wished him to stay but Leonora did not support them In a house where an aged relative lay ill and that relative so pathetically bereaved it was not meet that a visitor should remain too long Immediately he had gone she began to anticipate their next meeting The eagerness of that anticipation surprised her And moreover the environment of her life closed quickly round her she could not ignore it She demanded of herself what was Arthurs excuse for calling and how it was that she should be so happy in the midst of woe and death Her joyous confidence was shaken Feeling that on such a day she ought to have been something other than a delicate châtelaine idly dispensing tea in a drawingroom she went upstairs determined to find some useful activity
The light was failing in the sickroom and the fire shone brighter Bessie had disappeared and Rose sat in her place Uncle Meshach still slept
Have you had a good rest my dear she 265whispered kissing Rose fondly You had better go downstairs Ive had some tea and Ill take charge here now
Very well the girl assented yawning Whos that just gone
Mr Twemlow
Oh mother Rose exclaimed in angry disappointment Why didnt some one tell me he was here
The cortège will move at 215 said the mourning invitation cards and on Saturday at two oclock Uncle Meshach dressed in deep black sat on a canechair against the wall in the bedroom of his late sister He had not been able to conceive Hannahs funeral without himself as chief mourner and therefore he had accomplished his own recovery in the amazing period of fifty hours and in addition to accomplishing his recovery he had given an uninterrupted series of the most minute commands concerning the arrangements for the obsequies Protests had been utterly useless It will kill him said Leonora to the doctor as Meshach risen straight out of bed was getting into a cab at Hillport that morning to drive to Church Street It may old Hawley answered But what can one do Smiling first at Meshach and then at Leonora the doctor had joined his 266aged patient in the cab and they had gone off together
Next to the canechair was Hannahs mahogany bed which had been stripped On the bed lay a massive oaken coffin and accurately fitted into the coffin lay the withered remains of Meshachs slave The prim and spotless bedroom with its chest of drawers its small glass its threecornered wardrobe its narrow washstand its odd bonnetboxes its trunk its skirts hung insideout behind the door its Bible with the spectaclecase on it its texts its miniature portraits its samplers framed in maple and its engraving of the infant John Wesley being saved from the fire at Epworth Vicarage framed in gold was eloquent of the habits of the woman who had used it without ambition without repining and without hope save an everlasting hope for more than fifty years
Into this room obedient to the rigid etiquette of an oldfashioned Five Towns funeral every person asked to the burial was bound to come in order to take a last look at the departed and to offer a few words of sympathy to the chief mourner As they entered—Stanway David Dain Fred Ryley Dr Hawley Leonora the servant and lastly Arthur Twemlow—unwillingly desecrating the almost sæcular modesty of the 267chamber Meshach received them one by one with calmness with detachment with the air of the curator of the museum Here she is his mien indicated That is to say whats left Gaze your fill Beyond a monotonous Thank ye thank ye in response to expressions of sympathy for him and of appreciation of Hannahs manifold excellences he made no remarks to any one except Leonora and Arthur Twemlow
Has that ginger wine come he asked Leonora anxiously The feast after the sepulture was as important and as strictly controlled by etiquette as the lyinginstate Leonora who had charge of the meal was able to give him an affirmative
Im glad as youve come he said to Twemlow I had a fancy for you to see her again as soon as they told me you was back Her makes a good corpse eh
Twemlow agreed To die suddenly thats the best he murmured awkwardly he did not know what to say
Her was a good sister a good sister Meshach pronounced with an emotion which was doubtless genuine and profound but which superficially resembled that of an examiner awarding passmarks to a pupil By the way Twemlow he added as Arthur was leaving the room didst 268ever thrash that business out wi our John Ive been thinking over a lot of things while I was fast abed up yon
Arthur stared at him
Thou knowst what I mean continued Meshach putting his thin tremulous hand on the edge of the coffin in order to rise from the chair
Yes Arthur replied I know I havent settled it yet I havent had time
I should ha thought thoudst had time enough lad said Meshach
Then the undertakers men adjusted the lid of the coffin hiding Aunt Hannahs face and screwed in the eight brass screws and clumped down the dark stairs with their burden and so across the pavement between two rows of sluttish sightseers to the hearse Uncle Meshach with the aid only of his stick entered the first coach John Stanway and Fred Ryley—the rules of precedence were thus inflexible—occupied the second and Arthur Twemlow with the family lawyer and the family doctor took the third Leonora remained in the house with the servant to spread the feast
The church was barely four hundred yards away and in less than half an hour they were all in the house again all save Aunt Hannah who had already in the vault of the Myatts passed the first five minutes of the tedium of waiting for 269the Day of Judgment And now as they gathered round the fish the fowl the ham the cake the preserves the tea the wines and the spirits etiquette demanded that they should be cheerful should show a resignation to the will of heaven and should eat heartily And although the rapidticking clock on the mantelpiece in the parlour pointed only to a little better than three oclock they were obliged to eat heartily for fear of giving pain to Uncle Meshach to drink much was not essential but nothing could have excused abstention from the solid fare The repast actively conducted by the mourning host was not finished until nearly halfpast four Then Twemlow and the doctor said that they must leave
Nay nay Meshach complained Theres the will to be read Its right and proper as all the guests should hear the will and itll take nobbut a few minutes
The enfeebled old man talked more and more the dialect which his father and mother had talked over his cradle
Better without us old friend the doctor said jauntily Besides my patients And by dint of blithe obstinacy he managed to get away and also to cover the retreat of Twemlow
I shall call in a day or two said Arthur to Uncle Meshach as they shook hands
270Ay call and see th old ruin Meshach replied and dropping back into his chair Now Dain he ordered
David Dain drew a long white envelope from his breast pocket
This is the last will and testament of me Hannah Margaret Myatt the lawyer began to read quickly in his thick voice of Church Street Bursley in the county of Stafford spinster I commit my body to the grave and my soul to God in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection through my Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ I bequeath ten pounds each to my dear nephew John Stanway and to his wife Leonora to purchase mourning at my decease and five pounds each for the same purpose to my dear greatnephew Frederick Wellington Ryley and to my greatnieces Ethel Rosalys and Millicent Stanway and to any other children of the said John and Leonora Stanway should they have such and should such children survive me This will is dated twelve years ago the lawyer stopped to explain He continued I further bequeath to my greatnephew Frederick Wellington Ryley the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds
Something for you there Frederick Wellington Ryley exclaimed Stanway in a frigid tone biting his thumb and looking up at the ceiling
271Ryley blushed He had scarcely spoken during the meal and he did not break his silence now
With much verbiage the will proceeded to state that the testatrix left the residue of her private savings to Meshach to dispose of absolutely according to his own discretion in case he should survive her and that in case she should survive him she left her private savings and the whole of the estate of which she and Meshach were joint tenants to John Stanway
There is a short codicil Dain added which revokes the legacy of two hundred and fifty pounds to Mr Ryley in case Mr Myatt should survive the testatrix It is dated some six months ago
Kindly read it said Stanway coldly
With pleasure the lawyer agreed and he read it
Then as it turns out Stanway remarked looking defiantly at his uncle Ryley gets nothing but five pounds under this will
Under this will nephew the old man assented
And may one inquire Stanway persisted the nature of your intentions in regard to aunts savings which she leaves you to dispose of according to your discretion
272What dost mean nephew
Leonora saw with anxiety that her husband while intending to be calm pompous and superior was in fact losing control of himself
I mean said John are you going to distribute them
No nephew Theyre well enough where they lie I shall none touch em
Stanway gave the sigh of a martyr who has sufficient spirit to be disdainful Throwing his serviette on the disordered table he pushed back his chair and stood up Youll excuse me now uncle he said bitterly polite I must be off to the works Ryley I shall want you And without another word he left the room and the house
Leonora was the last to go Meshach would not allow her to stay after the teathings were washed up He declined firmly every offer of help or companionship and since the middleaged servant made no objection to being alone with her convalescent master Leonora could only submit to his wishes
When she was gone he lighted his pipe At seven oclock the servant came into the parlour and found him dozing in the dark his pipe hung loosely from his teeth
Eh mester she cried lighting the gas 273Hadnt ye better go to bed Yeve had a worriting day
Happen Id better he answered deliberately taking hold of the pipe and adjusting his spectacles
Can ye undress yeself she asked him
Ay he said I can do that wench My candle
And he went carefully up to bed
274
CHAPTER X
IN THE GARDEN
Fathers in a horrid temper Did anything go wrong said Rose when Leonora reached Hillport
No Leonora replied Where is he
In the drawingroom He says he wont have any tea
You must remember my dear that your father has been through a great deal this last day or two
So have all of us as far as that goes Rose stated ruthlessly However—— She turned away shrugging her shoulders
Leonora wondered by means of what sad experience Rose would ultimately discover that whereas men have the right to cry out when they are hurt it is the whole business of a womans life to suffer in cheerful silence She sat with the girls during tea drinking a cup for the sake of form and giving them disconnected items of information about the funeral which at their own 275passionate request they had been excused from attending The talk was carried on in low tones so that the rattle of a spoon in a saucer sounded loud and distinct And in the drawingroom John steadily perused the Signal column by column from the announcement of Pink Dominoes at the Hanbridge Theatre Royal on the first page to the bait of a sporting bookmaker in Holland at the end of the last The evening was desolating but Leonora endured it with philosophy because she appreciated Johns state of mind
It was the disclosure of the legacy of two hundred and fifty pounds to Fred Ryley and of the recent conditional revocation of that legacy which had galled her husbands sensibilities by bringing home to him what he had lost through Aunt Hannahs sudden death and through the senile whim of Uncle Meshach to alter his will He could well have tolerated Meshachs refusal to distribute Aunt Hannahs savings immediately Leonora thought had the old mans original testament remained uncancelled Once upon a time Ryley the despised poor relation the offspring of an outcast from the family was to have been put off with two hundred and fifty pounds and the bulk of the Myatt joint fortune was to have passed in any case to John The 276withdrawal of the paltry legacy as shown in the codicil was the outward and irritating sign that Ryley had been lifted from his humble position to the level of John himself John of course had known months ago that he and Ryley stood level in the hazard of gaining the inheritance but the history of the legacy revealed after the funeral aroused his disgusted imagination as it had not been roused before
He was beaten and more important he knew it now he had the incensed futile malevolent devilmaycare feeling of being beaten He bitterly invited Fate not to stop at halfmeasures but to come on and do her worst And Fate with that mysterious responsiveness which often distinguishes her movements came on Of course I might have expected it John exclaimed savagely two days later when he received a circular to the effect that a small and desperate minority of shareholders were trying to put the famous brewery company into liquidation under the supervision of the Court The shares fell another five in twentyfour hours The Bursley Conservative Club knew positively the same night that John had got out at a ruinous loss and this episode seemed to give vigorous life to certain rumours hitherto faint that John and his uncle had violently quarrelled 277at his aunts funeral and that when Meshach died Fred Ryley would be found to be the heir Other rumours that Ethel Stanway and Fred Ryley were about to be secretly married that Dain would have been the owner of Prince but for the difference between guineas and pounds and that the real object of Arthur Twemlows presence in the Five Towns was to buy up the concern of Twemlow Stanway were received with reserve though not entirely discredited The town however was more titillated than perturbed for every one said that old Meshach for the sake of the familys good name would never under any circumstances permit a catastrophe to occur The town saw little of Meshach now—he had almost ceased to figure in the streets it knew however the Myatt pride in the Myatt respectability
Leonora sympathised with John but her sympathy weakened by his surliness was also limited by her ignorance of his real plight and by the secret preoccupation of her own existence From the evening of the funeral the desire to see Arthur again to study his features to hear his voice definitely took the uppermost place in her mind She thought of him always and she ceased to pretend to herself that this was not so 278She continually expected him to call or to meet some one who had met him or to receive a letter from him She forced her memory to reconstitute in detail his last visit to Hillport and all the exacerbating scene of the funeral feast in order that she might dwell tenderly upon his gestures his glances his remarks the inflections of his voice The eyes of her soul were ever beholding his form Even at breakfast after the disappointment of the post she would indulge in ridiculous hopes that he might be abroad very early and would look in and not until bedtime did she cease to listen for his ring at the front door No chance of a meeting was too remote for her wild fancy But she dared not breathe his name dared not even adumbrate an inquiry and her husband and daughters appeared to have entered into a compact not to mention him She did not take counsel with herself examine herself demand from herself what was the significance of these symptoms she could not she could only live from one moment to the next engrossed in an eternal expectancy which instead of slackening became hourly more intense and painful Towards the close of the afternoon of the third day in the drawingroom she whispered that something decisive must happen soon soon The bell rang her ears caught the distant sound for 279which they had so long waited Shuddering she thanked heaven that she was alone She could hear the opening and closing of the front door In three seconds Bessie would appear She heard the knob of the drawingroom door turn and to hide her agitation she glanced aside at the clock It was a quarter to six He will stay the evening she thought
Mr Dain Bessie proclaimed
Oh how do you do Mrs Stanway Stanway not come in yet eh said the stout lawyer approaching her hurriedly with his fussy awkward gait
She could have laughed but the visit was at any rate a distraction
A few minutes later John arrived
Dain will stay for tea Nora Eh Dain he said
Well—thanks was Dains reply
She asked herself with sudden misgiving what new thing was afoot
After tea the two men were left together at the table
Mother Ethel inquired eagerly coming into the drawingroom why are father and Mr Dain measuring the diningroom
I dont know said Leonora Are they
Yes Mr Dain has got ever such a long tape
280Leonora went into the kitchen and talked to the cook
The next morning an idea occurred to her Since the funeral the girls had been down to see Uncle Meshach each afternoon and Leonora had called at Church Street in the forenoon so that the solitude of the old man might be broken at least twice a day When she had suggested the arrangement to her husband John had answered stiffly with an unimpeachable righteousness that everything possible must be done for his uncle On this fourth day Leonora sent Ethel and Milly in the morning with a message that she herself would come in the afternoon by way of change The phrase that sang in her head was Arthurs promise to Meshach I shall call in a day or two She knew that he had not yet called Dont wait tea if I should be late dears she said smilingly to the girls I may stay with uncle a while And she nearly ran out of the house
When they had had tea and when Leonora had performed the delicate feat of arranging Uncle Meshachs domestic affairs without affronting his servant she sat down opposite to him before the fire in the parlour
281Youre for stopping a bit eh he said as if surprised
Well she laughed wouldnt you like me to
Oh ay he admitted readily Ist like it well enough I dont know but what you arent all on ye very good—you and th wenches and Fred as calls in of nights But its all one to me I reckon I take no pleasure i life Nay he went on it isnt because of her Ive felt as I was done for for months past I mun just drag on
Dont talk like that uncle She tried conventionally to cheer him You must rouse yourself
What for
She sought a good answer to this conundrum For all of us she said lamely at length
Leonora my lass he remarked drily youre no better than the rest of em
And as she sat there in the ageworn parlour and thought of the distant days of his energy when with his own hands he had pulled down a wall and replaced it by a glass partition and of the night when he lay like a corpse on Ethels bed at the mercy of his nephew and of Aunt Hannah resting in the cold tomb just at the end of the street her heart was filled for a moment with an 282awful ineffable devastating sadness It seemed to her that every grief anxiety apprehension was joy itself compared to this supreme tragedy of natural decay
Shall I light the gas she suggested The room was always obscure and that evening happened to be a sombre one
Ay
There she said brightly when the gas flared thats better isnt it Arent you going to smoke
Ay
In reaching a second spill from the spilljar on the mantelpiece she noticed the clock It was only a quarter past five He may call yet she dreamed and then a more piquant thought He may be at home when I get back
There was a perfunctory knock at the housedoor She started
Its the Signal lad Meshach explained He keeps on bringing it but I never look at it
She went into the lobby for the paper and then read aloud to Uncle Meshach the items of local news The clock showed a quarter to six Suddenly it struck her that Arthur Twemlow might have called quite early in the afternoon and that Meshach might have forgotten to tell her If he had perchance called and perchance informed 283Meshach that he was going on to Hillport and if he had walked up by the road while she came down by the fields The idea was too dreadful
Has Mr Twemlow been to see you yet she demanded after a long silence pretending to be interested in the Signal
No said Meshach why dost ask
I remembered he said he should
Hell come hell come Meshach murmured confidently Dains been in he added wi papers to sign probate o Hannahs will Seemingly Johns not satisfied from what Dain hints
Not satisfied with what Flushing a little she dropped the paper but she was still busily employed in expecting Arthur to arrive
Eh I canna tell you lass Meshach gave a grim sigh You know as I altered my will
Jack mentioned it
Me and her we thought it over It was her as first said that Fred was getting a nice young chap and very respectable and why should he be left out in the cold And so I says to her I says Well you can make your will i favour o Fred if youve a mind Nay Meshach her says never ask me to cut out our Johns name Well I says to her if you wont I will Itll give em both an even chance Usn die pretty near together me and you Hannah itll 284be a tossup I says Wasnt that fair Leonora made no reply Wasnt that fair he repeated
She could not be sure even then whether Uncle Meshach had devised in perfect seriousness this extraordinary arrangement for dealing justly between the surviving members of the Myatt family or whether he had always had a private humorous appreciation of the fantastic element in it
I dont know she said
Well lass he continued persuasively sitting up in his chair us ignored young Fred for more till twenty year And it wasna right Hannah said it wasna right as Fred should suffer for his mother and his grandfeyther And then us give Fred and your John an equal chance and Johns lost and now John isna satisfied by all accounts She gazed at him with a gentle smile Why dostna speak lass
What am I to say uncle
Wouldst like me to make a new will and halve it between John and Fred It wouldna be fair to Fred not rightly fair because hes run his risk for th lot But wouldst like it lass
There was a trace of the old vitality in his shrivelled features as he laid this offering on the altar of her feminine charm
Oh do uncle she was about to say eagerly 285but she thought in the same instant of John standing over Meshachs body with the icecold cloth in his hand and something some dim instinct of a fundamental propriety prevented her from uttering those words I would like you to do whatever you think right she answered with calmness
Meshach was evidently disappointed
I shall see he ejaculated And after a pause Johns i smooth water again isnt he I meant to ask Dain
I think so said Leonora
She had become restive Soon afterwards she bade him goodnight and departed And all the way up to Hillport she speculated upon the chances of finding Arthur in her drawingroom when she got home
As she passed through the hall she knew at once that Arthur was not in the house and had not been there and the agitation of her heart subsided suddenly into the melancholy stillness of defeated hope She sadly admitted that she no longer knew herself and that the Leonora of old had been supplanted by a creature of incalculable moods a feeble victim of strange crises of secret folly Through the open door of the drawingroom she could see Rose reading and 286Millicent searching among a pile of music on the piano Bessie emerged from the diningroom with a white cloth and the crumbtray
Masters in there said Bessie they didnt wait tea maam
Leonora went into the diningroom where John sat alone at the bare mahogany smoking With her deep knowledge of him she detected instantly that he had been annoyed by her absence from tea The condition of the sharp end of his cigar showed that he was perturbed fretful and perhaps in a state of suspense Well she thought with resignation I may as well play the wife and she sat down in a chair near him put her purse on the table and smiled generously Then she raised her veil loosed the buttons of her new black coat and began to draw off her gloves
Ive been waiting for you he said and to her surprise his tone was extremely pacific
Have you she answered intensifying all her alluring grace I hurried home
Yes I wanted to ask you—— He stopped ostensibly to put the cigar into his meerschaum holder
She perceived that the desire to ingratiate fought within him against his vexation and she wondered with a touch of cynicism what new 287scheme had got possession of him and how her assistance was necessary to it
Would you like to go and live in the country Nora He looked at her audaciously for a moment and then his eyes shifted
For the summer you mean
Yes he said for the summer and the winter too Somewhere out Sneyd way
And leave here
Exactly
But what about the house Jack
Sell it if you like said John lightly
Oh no I shouldnt like that at all she replied nervously but amiably She wished to believe that his suggestion about selling the house was merely an idle notion thrown out on the spur of the moment but she could not
You wouldnt
She shook her head What has made you think of going to live in the country she asked him using a tone of gentle mild curiosity How should you get to the works in the morning
Theres a very good train service from Sneyd to Knype he said But look here Nora why wouldnt you care to sell the house
It was perfectly clear to her that having mortgaged her house he had now made up his mind to sell it He must therefore still be in 288financial difficulties and she had unwittingly misled Uncle Meshach
I dont know she answered coldly I cant explain to you why But I shouldnt And she privately resolved that nothing should induce her to assent to this monstrous proposal Her heart hardened to steel She felt prepared to suffer any unpleasantness any indignity rather than give way
It isnt as if Hillport wasnt changing he went on politely argumentative It is changing In another ten years all the decent estates will have been broken up and we shall be left alone in the middle of streets of villas rented at nineteen guineas to escape the house duty You know the sort of thing And Ive had a very fair offer for the place
Whom from
Well Dain I know hes wanted the house a long time Of course hes a hard nut to crack is Dain But he went up to two thousand and yesterday I got him to make it guineas Thats a good price Nora
Is it she exclaimed absently
I should just imagine it was said John
So it was expected of her that she should surrender her home her domain her kingdom the beautiful and mellow creation of her intelli289gence and that she should surrender it to David Dain and to the impossible Mrs Dain and to their impossible niece She remembered one of Millys wicked tales about Mrs Dain and the niece Milly had met Mrs Dain in the street and in response to an inquiry about the health of the hypochondriacal niece Mrs Dain gorgeously attired had replied Her had but just rallied up off th squab as I come out These were the people who wanted to evict her from her house And they would cover its walls with new papers and its floors with new carpets in their own appalling taste and they would crowd the rooms with furniture as fat clumsy and disgusting as themselves And Mrs Dain would hold sewing meetings in the drawingroom and would stand chattering with tradesmen at the front door and would drive out to Sneyd to pay a call on Leonora and tell her how pleased they all were with the place
Do you absolutely need the money John She came to the point with a frank blunt directness which angered him
I dont absolutely need anything he retorted controlling himself But Dain made the offer——
Because if you do she proceeded I dare say Uncle Meshach——
290Look here my girl he interrupted in turn Ive had exactly as much of Uncle Meshach as I can stand I know all about Uncle Meshach what I wanted to know was whether you cared to sell the house And then he added after hesitating and with a false graciousness To oblige me
There was a marked pause
I really shouldnt like to sell the house John she answered quietly It was aunts and——
Enough said enough said he cried That finishes it I suppose you dont mind my having asked you
He walked out of the room in a rage
Tears came into her eyes the tears of a wounded and proud heart Was it conceivable that he expected her to be willing to sell her house He must indeed be in serious straits She would consult Uncle Meshach
The front door banged And then Rose entered the room
Leonora drove back the tears
Your father has been suggesting that we sell this house and go and live at Sneyd she said to the girl in a trembling voice Arent you surprised She seldom talked about John to her 291daughters but at that moment a desire for sympathy overwhelmed her
I should never be surprised at anything where father was concerned said Rose coldly with a slight hint of aloofness and of mental superiority Not at anything
Leonora got up and leaving the room went into the garden through the side door opposite the stable She could hear Millicent practising the Jewel Song from Gounods Faust As she passed down the sombre garden the sound of the piano and of Millys voice in the brilliant ecstatic phrases of the song grew fainter She shook violently like a child who is recovering from a fit of sobs and without thinking she fastened her coat What a shame it is that he should want to sell my house What a shame she murmured full of an aggrieved resentment At the same time she was surprised to find herself so suddenly and so deeply disturbed
At the foot of the long garden was a low fence separating it from the meadow and in the fence a wicket from which ran a faint track to the main fieldpath She leaned against the fence a few yards away from the wicket at a spot where a clump of bushes screened the house No one could possibly have seen her from the house even 292had the bushes not been there but she wished to isolate herself completely and to find tranquillity in the isolation The calm spring night chill but not too cold cloudy but not too dark favoured her intention She gazed about her at the obscure nocturnal forms of things at the silent trees and the mysterious clouds gently rounded in their vast shape and the sharp slant of the meadow Far below could be seen the red signal of the railway and mapped in points of light on the opposite slope the streets of Bursley To the right the eternal conflagration of the Cauldon Bar furnaces illumined the sky with wavering amber And on the keen air came to her from the distance noises soft but impressive of immense industrial activities
She thought she could decipher a figure moving from the fieldpath across the gloom of the meadow and as she strained her eyes the figure became an indubitable fact Presently she knew that it was Arthur At last her heart passionately exclaimed and she was swept and drenched with happiness as a ship by the ocean She forgot everything in the tremendous shock of joy She felt as though she could have waited no more and that now she might expire in a bliss intense and fatal in a sigh of supreme content She could not stir nor speak and he 293was striding towards the wicket unconscious of her nearness She coughed a delicate feminine cough and then he turned aside from the direction of the wicket and approached the fence peering
Is that you he asked
Yes
Across the fence they clasped hands And in spite of her great wish not to do so she clutched his hand tightly in her long fingers and held it for a moment And as she felt the returning pressure of his large powerful protective grasp she covered—but in imagination only—she covered his face which she could shadowily see with brave and abandoned kisses and she whispered to him but unheard Admit that I am made for love She feared in those beautiful and shameless instants neither John nor Ethel and Milly nor even Rose She knew suddenly why men and women leave all—honour duty and affection—and follow love Then her arm dropped and there was silence
What are you doing here She was unable to speak in an ordinary tone but she spoke Her voice exquisitely trembled and its vibrations said everything that the words did not say
Why he answered and his voice too bore strange messages I called at Church Street and 294Mr Myatt said you had only been gone a few minutes and so I came right away I guessed I should overtake you I dont know what he would think Arthur laughed nervously
She smiled at him satisfied And how well she knew that her smiling face caught by him dimly in the obscurity of the night troubled him like an enchanting and enigmatic vision
After they had looked at each other speechless for a while the strong influence of convention forced them again into unnecessary irrelevant talk
Whats this about you selling this place he inquired in a low mild tone
Have you heard
Yes he said I did hear something
Ah she murmured wrinkling her forehead in a pretty makebelieve of woe—the question of the sale had ceased to be acute I just came out here to think about it
But you arent really going to——
No of course not
She had no desire to discuss the tedious affair because she was infallibly certain of his entire sympathy Explanations on her side and assurances on his were equally superfluous
But wont you come into the house She invited him as a sort of afterthought
295Why he demanded bluntly
She hesitated before replying It will look so queer us staying here like this As soon as she had uttered the words she suspected that she had said something decisive and irretrievable
He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and walked several times to and fro a few paces Then he stopped in front of her
I guess we are bound to look queer you and I some day So it may as well be now he said
It was in this exchange of sentences that their mutual passion became at length articulate A single discreet word spoken quickly and she might even yet perhaps have withdrawn from the situation But she did not speak she could not speak and soon she knew that her own silence had bound her She yielded herself with poignant and magnificent joy to the profound drama which had been magically created by this apparently commonplace dialogue The climax had been achieved and she was conscious of being lifted into a sublime exultation and of being cut off from all else in the world save him She looked at him intently with a sadness that was the cloak of celestial rapture How courageous you are her soft eyes said I should never have dared What a man It seemed to her that her heart 296would break under the strain of that ecstasy She had not imagined the possibility of such bliss
Listen he proceeded I ought to be in New York—I oughtnt to be here I must tell you Scarcely a fortnight ago one afternoon while I was working in my office in Fourteenth Street I had a feeling I would be bound to come over I said to myself the idea was preposterous But the next thing I knew I was arranging to come I couldnt believe I was coming Not even when I had booked my berth and boarded the steamer not even when the steamer was actually passing Sandy Hook could I believe that I was really coming I said to myself I was mad I said to myself that no man in his senses could behave as I was behaving And when I got to Southampton I said I would go right back And yet I couldnt help getting into the special for London And when I got to London I said I would act sensible and go back But I met young Burgess and the next thing I knew I was at Euston And here I am pretending that its my new London branch that brings me over and doing business I dont want to do in Knype and Cauldon and Bursley And Im killing myself—yes I am I tell you I couldnt stand much more—and I wouldnt be sure I wasnt killing you 297Some folks would say the whole thing was perfectly dreadful but I dont care so long as you—so long as you dont Im not conceited really but it looks like conceit—me talking like this and assuming that youre ready to stand and listen I assure you it isnt conceit I only know—thats all Its difficult for you to say anything—I can feel that—but Id like you just to tell me youre glad I came and glad Ive spoken Id just like to hear that
She gazed fondly at him at the male creature in whom she could find only perfection and she was filled with glorious pride that her image should have drawn this strong shrewd selfpossessed man across the Atlantic It was incredible but it was true And said the secret feminine in her why not
He waited for her answer facing her
Oh yes she breathed Oh yes Im glad—Im so glad
I wish he broke out I wish I could explain to you what I think of you what I feel about you Youre so quiet and simple and direct and yet—you dont know it but you are Youre absolutely the most—Oh its no use
She saw that he was growing very excited and this too gave her deep pleasure
Were in a hell of a fix he sighed
298Like many women she took a fearful almost thrilling joy in hearing a man swear earnestly and religiously
Thats it she said theres nothing to be done
Nothing to be done he demanded imperiously Nothing to be done
She examined his face which was close to hers with a meditative expectant smile She loved to see him out of repose eager masterful and daring What is there to be done she asked
I dont know yet he said firmly I must think Then in a delicious surrender she felt towards him as though they were on the brink of a rushing river and he was about to pick her up in his arms like a trifle and carry her safely through the flood and she had the illusion of pressing her face which she knew he adored against his shoulder
Oh you innocent angel he cried seizing her hand she let it lie inert do you suppose Im the sort of man to sit down and cross my legs and say that fate or whatever you call it hasnt done me right Do you suppose that two sensible persons like you and me are going to be beaten by a mere set of circumstances We arent children and we arent fools
299But——
Youre not afraid are you He drank in her charm
What of
Anything
Its when you arent there she murmured tenderly She really thought then that by some marvellous plan he would perform the impossible feat of reconciling the duty of fulfilling love with all the other duties
I shall reckon it up he said Ah
Silence fell And with the feel of the grass under her feet and the soft clouds overhead and the patient trees and the glare in the southern smoke and the lamps of Bursley and the solitary red signal in the valley she breathed out her spirit like an aerial essence and merged into unity with him And the strange faroff noises of nocturnal industry wandered faintly across the void and seemed fraught with a mysterious significance Everything in that unique hour had the same mysterious significance
Mother Millicents distant voice fresh and strong and pure in the night chanted the word startlingly to the first notes of a phrase from the Jewel Song Mother Arent you coming in The girl finished the phrase with inviting gaiety holding the final syllable And the sound faded 300went out like the flare of a rocket in the sky and the dark stillness was emphasised
They did not move they did not speak but Leonora pressed his hand The passing thought of the orderly multifarious existence of the house behind her of the warmed and lighted rooms of the preoccupied lives only increased the felicity of her halcyon dream And in the dreamy and brooding silence all things retreated and gradually lapsed away and the pair were left sole amid the ineffable spaces of the universe to listen to the irregular beatings of their own hearts Time itself had paused
Mother Millicent sang again nearer more strongly and purely in the night We are waiting for you to come in She varied a little the phrase from the Jewel Song To come in The long sustained notes seemed to become a beautiful warning and then the sound expired
Leonora withdrew her hand
I shall think it out and write you tomorrow Arthur whispered and was gone
The next day after a futile morning of hesitations Leonora decided in the afternoon that she would go out for a walk and return in some definite state of mind She loosed Bran and the dog when he had finished his elephantine 301gambades followed her close at heel with all stateliness to the wide marsh on the brow of the hill Here she began actively and seriously to cogitate
John was sulking and it was seldom that he sulked He had not spoken to her again neither on the previous evening nor at breakfast he had said nothing whatever to any one except to tell Bessie that he should not be at home for dinner on committeemeeting days when he was engaged at the Town Hall John sometimes dined at the Tiger His attitude produced small effect on Leonora She was far too completely absorbed in herself to be perturbed by the offensive symptoms of her husbands wrath She had neglected even to call on Uncle Meshach and as she strolled about the marsh she thought vaguely and perfunctorily that she must see Uncle Meshach soon and acquaint him with Johns difficulties
Pride as much as joy and alarm filled her heart She was proud of her perilous love she would have liked proudly to confide it to some friend some mature and brilliant woman who knew the world and understood things and who would talk rationally it seemed to her that this secret idyll at once tender and sincere and rather dashing was worthy of pride She knew that 302many women languishing in the greyness of an impeccable and frigid domesticity would be capable of envying her she remembered that in reading the newspapers she had sometimes timidly envied the heroines of the matrimonial court who had bought romance at the price of esteem and of peace Then suddenly the whole matter slipped into unreality and she could not credit it Was it possible that she a respectable matron a known figure the mother of adult daughters had fallen in love with a man not her husband had had a secret interview with her lover and was anticipating not a retreat but an advance And she thought as every honest woman has thought in like case This may happen to others one hears of it one reads about it but surely it cannot have happened to me And when she had admitted that it had in fact happened to her and had perceived with a kind of shock that the heroines of the matrimonial court were real persons everyday creatures of fleshandblood she thought again like the rest Ah But my affair is different from all the others There is something in it something indefinable and precious which makes it different
She said Can one help falling in love Can one be blamed for that
303For John she had little compassion and the gay and feverish existence of New York spread out invitingly before her in a vision full of piquant contrasts with the deathinlife of the Five Towns But her beloved girls They were an insuperable barrier She could not leave them she could not forfeit the right to look them in the eyes without embarrassment And then the next moment—somehow she did not know how—the difficulty of the girls was arranged And she had departed She had left the Five Towns for ever And she was in the train in the hotel on the steamer she saw every detail of the escape Oh The rapture The tremors The long sigh The surrender The intense living Surely no price could be too great
No Common sense the acquirement of forty years supervened and informed her wild heart with all the cold arrogance of sagacity that these imaginings were vain She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist She saw with extraordinary clearness that this course was inevitable And lest her resolution might slacken she turned instantly towards home and began to hurry The dog glanced up questioningly and hurried too
Why she reflected People would say 304And her husbands aunt scarcely cold in her grave She laughed scornfully
A carriage overtook her It was Mrs Dains coming from the direction of Oldcastle
Good afternoon to you Mrs Dain shouted without stopping and then when she caught sight of Bran Bless us The dog hasnt brukken his leg after all
Broken his leg Leonora repeated astonished The carriage was now in front of her
Our Polly come in this morning and sat hersen down on a chair and told us as your dog had brukken his leg What tales one hears Mrs Dain had to twist her stout neck dangerously in order to finish the sentence
I should think so was Leonoras private comment her gaze fixed on the scarlet of Mrs Dains nodding bonnet
In the little room off the diningroom Leonora dipped pen in ink to write to Arthur She wrote the date and she wrote the word Dear And she could not proceed She knew that she could not compose a letter which would be effective She went to the window and looked out biting the pen What am I to do she whispered in terror What am I to do Then she saw Ethel running hard down the drive to the front door
305Oh mother The pale girl burst into the room Fathers done something to himself Freds come up Theyre bringing him
John Stanway had called at the chemists in the Market Place and had given a circumstantial description of an accident to Bran It appeared that while Carpenter was washing the waggonette Bran being loose in the stableyard the groom had suddenly slipped the lever of the carriagejack and the off hind wheel had caught Brans hind leg and snapped it like a piece of wood The chemist had suggested prussic acid and John had laughingly answered that perhaps the chemist would be good enough to come up and show them how to administer prussic acid to a dog of Brans size in great pain John explained that the animal was now fast by the collar and he had demanded a large dose of morphia together with a hypodermic instrument Having obtained these and precise instructions for their use John had hurried away It was not till three hours had elapsed that a startling suspicion had disturbed the chemists easy mind By that time his preparations completed John had dropped unconscious from the armchair in his office at the works and Bursley was provided with one of those morbid sensations which more than joy or 306triumph electrify the stagnant pulses of a provincial town Scores of persons followed the cab which conveyed Stanway from the works to his house and on the route most of the inhabitants seemed to know in advance by some strange intuition that the vehicle was coming and at their windows or at their gates according to social status they stood ready to watch it pass And even after John had entered his home and had been carried upstairs and the cab and the policeman had gone and the doctor had gone and Fred Ryley and Mr Mayer the works manager had gone a crowd still remained on the footpath staring at the gravelled drive and at the front door silent patient implacable
The doctor had tried hot coffee artificial respiration and other remedies but without the least success and he had reluctantly departed solemn for once leaving four women to understand that there was nothing to do save to wait for the final sigh The inactivity was dreadful for them They could only look at each other and think and move to and fro aimlessly in the large bedroom and light the gas at dusk and examine from moment to moment those contracted pupils and that damp white brow and listen for the faint occasional breaths They did not think the thoughts which could they have 307foreseen the situation they might have expected to think It did not occur to them to search for the causes of the disaster nor to speculate upon its results in regard to themselves they surrendered to the supreme fact They were all incapable of logical and ordered reflections and in the hushed torpor of their secret hearts there wandered loosely little disconnected ideas and sensations as that the Stanway family was at length getting its full share of vicissitude and misfortune that John was after all more important and more truly dominant and more intimately a part of their lives than they had imagined that this affair was a thousand miles removed from that of Uncle Meshach that they were fully supplied with mourning and that suicide was mysteriously different from their previous notion of it The impressive thoughts the obvious thoughts—that if their creeds were sound a soul was about to enter into eternal torment and that their lives would be violently changed and that they would be branded before the world as the wife and the daughters of a defaulter and a self-murderer—did not by any means absorb their minds in those first hours
In the attitude of the girls towards Leonora there was a sort of religious deference as of priestesses to one soon to be sacrificed She 308is the central figure of the tragedy they had the air of saying to each other We feel the affliction but it cannot be demanded from us that we should feel it as she feels it We are only beginning to live we have the future but she—she will have nothing She will be the widow And the significance of that terrible word—all that it implied of social diminishment of feeding on memory and of mere waiting for death—seemed to cling about Leonora as she stood restlessly observant by the bed And when Rose urged her to drink some tea she could not help drinking the tea humbly from a sense of the duty of doing what she was told It was not Roses fault that Rose was superior and that only twentyfour hours ago she had coldly informed her mother that no act of her fathers would surprise her Leonora resigned herself to humility
Mamma said Millicent creeping into the room after an absence Uncle Meshach is here with Mr Twemlow and he says hes coming in Must he
Of course darling Leonora answered without turning her head
Uncle Meshach appeared leaning on his stick and on Arthurs arm He wore his overcoat and even his hat and a white knitted muffler encircled his shrivelled neck in loose folds No 309one spoke as the old and feeble man with short uncertain steps drew Arthur towards the bed and gazed at his dying nephew Meshach looked long and sighed Suddenly he demanded of Leonora in a whisper
Is he unconscious
Leonora nodded
Drawing a little nearer to the bed Meshach signed to Millicent to approach and gave her his stick Then he unbuttoned his overcoat and his coat and the flappocket of his trousers and after much searching found a box of matches He shook out a match clumsily and struck it and came still nearer to the bed All wondered apprehensively what the old man was going to do but none dared interfere or protest because he was so old and so precariously attached to life and because he was the head of the family With his thin veined trembling hand he passed the lighted match close across Johns eyeballs not a muscle twitched Then he extinguished the match put it in the box returned the box to his pocket and buttoned the pocket and his coats
Ay he breathed The lads unconscious right enough Lets be going
Taking his stick from Milly he clutched Arthurs arm again and very slowly left the room
310After a moments hesitation Leonora followed and overtook them at the bottom of the stairs it was the first time she had forsaken the bedside She was surprised to see Fred Ryley in the hall selfconscious but apparently determined to be quite at home She remembered that he said he should come up again as soon as he had arranged matters at the works
Just take Mr Myatt to the cab will you said Twemlow quietly to Fred Ill follow
Certainly Fred agreed pulling his moustache nervously Now Mr Myatt let me help you
Ay said Meshach Thou shalt help me if thoun a mind As he was feeling for the step with his stick he stopped and looked round at Leonora Lass he exclaimed thou toldst me John was i smooth water Then he departed and they could hear his shuffling steps on the gravel
Twemlow glanced inquiringly at Leonora
Come in here she said briefly pointing to the drawingroom They entered it was dark
Your uncle made me drive up with him Arthur explained as if in apology
She ignored the remark You must go back to New York—at once she told him in a dry curt voice
311Yes he assented I suppose Id better
And dont write to me—until after I have written
Oh but—— he began
She thought wildly This man with his reason and his judgment has not the slightest notion how I feel not the slightest
I must write he said in a persuasive tone
No she cried passionately and vehemently You arent to write and you arent to see me You must promise absolutely
For how long he asked
She shook her head I dont know I cant tell
But isnt that rather——
Will you promise she cried once more quite loudly and almost fiercely And her accents were so full of entreaty of command and of despair that Arthur feared a nervous crisis for her
If you wish it he said forced to yield
And even then she could not be content
You give me your word to do nothing at all until you hear from me
He paused but he saw no alternative to submission Yes
She thanked him and without shaking hands or saying goodnight she went upstairs and 312resumed her place by the bedside She could hear Uncle Meshachs cab drive away
How came Mr Twemlow to be here mother Rose demanded quietly
I dont know Leonora replied He must have been at uncles
When the doctor had been again and gone and various neighbours and the Signal reporter had called to inquire for news and the hour was growing late Ethel said to her mother Fred thinks he had better stay all night
But why Leonora asked
Well mother said Milly its just as well to have a man in the house
He can rest on the Chesterfield in the drawingroom Ethel added Then if hes wanted——
Yes yes Leonora agreed And tell him hes very kind
At midnight Fred was reading in the drawingroom the man in the house the ultimate fount of security for seven women Bessie having refused positively to go to bed slept in a chair in the kitchen her heels touching the scrap of hearthrug which lay like a little island on the red tiles in front of the range Rose and Millicent had retired to bed till three oclock Ethel as the eldest stayed with her mother When the hallclock sounded one meaning half past twelve 313Leonora glanced at her daughter who reclined on the sofa at the foot of the beds the girl had fallen into a doze
Johns condition was unchanged the doctor had said that he might possibly survive for many hours He lay on his back with open eyes and damp face and hair his arms rested inert on the sheet and underneath that thin covering his chest rose and fell from time to time with a scarcely perceptible movement It seemed to Leonora that she could realise now what had happened and what was to happen In the nocturnal solemnity of the house filled with sleeping and quiescent youth she who was so mature and so satiate had the sensation of being alone with her mate Images of Arthur Twemlow did not distract her With the full strength of her mind she had shut an iron door on the episode in the garden it was as though it had never existed And she gazed at John with calm and sad compassion I would not sell my home she reflected and here is the consequence of refusal She wished she had yielded—and she could perceive how unimportant comparatively bricksandmortar might be—but she did not blame herself for not having yielded She merely regretted her sensitive obstinacy as a misfortune for both of them She had a vision of 314humanity in a hurried procession driven along by some force unseen and ruthless a procession in which the grotesque and the pitiable were always occurring She thought of John standing over Meshach with the cold towel and of Meshach passing the flame across Johns dying eyes and these juxtapositions appeared to her intolerably mournful in their ridiculous grimness
Impelled by a physical curiosity she lifted the sheet and scrutinised Johns breast so pallid against the dark red of his neck and bent down to catch the last tired efforts of the heart within And the idea of her extraordinary intimacy with this man of the incessant familiarity of more than twenty years struck her and overwhelmed her She saw that nothing is so subtly influential as constant uninterrupted familiarity nothing so binding and perhaps nothing so sacred It was a trifle that they had not loved They had lived Ah she knew him so profoundly that words could not describe her knowledge He kept his own secrets hundreds of them and he had in a way astounded and shocked her by his suicide Yet in another way this miserable termination did not at all surprise her and his secrets were petty factual things of no essential import which left her mystic omniscience of him unimpaired
She looked at his eyes and thought pitifully 315These eyes cannot see that I uncover him Then she looked again at his breast which heaved in shallow respirations And at the moment he exhaled a sigh so softly delicate and gentle that it might have been the sigh of an infant sinking to sleep She put her ear quickly to the still breast as to a seashell and listened intently and caught no rumour of life there Startled she glanced at the jaw which had dropped and then at Ethel dozing on the sofa
The room was filled for her with the majestic sound of trumpets loud sustained and thrilling but heard only by the soul a noble and triumphant fanfare announcing the awful advent of those forces which are beyond the earthly sense Johns body lay suddenly deserted and residual that deceitful brain and that lying tongue and that murderous hand had already begun to decay and the informing fragment of eternal and universal energy was gone to its next manifestation and its next task unconscious irresponsible and unchanged The ineptitude of human judgments had been once more emphasised and the great excellence of charity
Ethel said Leonora timorously waking with a touch the young and beautiful girl whose flushed cheek was pressed against the cushion of the sofa Hes gone Call Fred
316
CHAPTER XI
THE REFUSAL
Fifteen months after Johns death and the inquest on his body and the clandestine funeral Leonora sat alone one evening in the garden of the house at Hillport She wore a black dress trimmed with jet a narrow band of white muslin clasped her neck and from her shoulders hung a long thin antique gold chain once the ornament of Aunt Hannah Her head was uncovered and the mild breeze which stirred the new leaves of the poplars moved also the stray locks of her hair Her calm and mature beauty was unchanged it was a common remark in the town that during the past year she had looked handsomer than ever more content radiant and serene And its not surprising either people added The homestead appeared to be as of old Carpenter was feeding Prince in the stable Bran lay huge and benign at the feet of his mistress the borders of the lawn were vivid with bloom and within the house Bessie still ruled the kitchen No 317luxury was abated and no custom altered Time apparently had nothing to show there save an engagement ring on Bessies finger Many things however had occurred but they had seemed to occur so placidly and the days had been so even that the term of her widowhood was to Leonora more like three months than fifteen and she often reminded herself It was last spring not this that he died
The business is right enough Fred Ryley had said positively with an emphasis on the word business when he met Leonora and Uncle Meshach in family council during the first week of the disaster and Meshach had replied Thou shalt prove it lad The next morning Mr Mayer the manager and everybody on the bank learned that Fred with old Myatt at his back was in sole control of the works at Shawport creditors breathed with relief and the whole of Bursley remembered that it had always prophesied that Freds sterling qualities were bound to succeed Meshach lent several thousands of pounds to Fred at five per cent and Fred was to pay half the net profits of the business to Leonora as long as she lived The youth did not change his lodgings nor his tailor nor his modest manners but he became nevertheless suddenly important and none appreciated this fact better than Mr Mayer whose 318sandy hair was getting grey and who having six children but no rich greatuncle could never hope to earn more than three pounds a week Fred was now an official member of the Myatt clan and in the town men of position pompous individuals who used to ignore him greeted the sole principal of Twemlow Stanways with a certain cordiality After an interval his engagement to Ethel was announced Every evening he came up to Hillport The couple were ardently and openly in love they expected always to have the diningroom at their private disposal and they had it Ethel simply adored him and he was immeasurably proud of her Even in presence of the family they would sit hand in hand making no attempt to conceal their bliss For the rest Freds attitude to Leonora was very affectionate and deferential it touched her though she knew he worshipped her ignorantly Rose and Millicent wondered what Ethel could see in him he was neither amusing nor smart nor clever nor even vivacious he had little acquaintance with games music novels or the feminist movement he was indeed rather dull but they liked him because he was fundamentally and invariably nice At the close of the year of Stanways death Fred had paid to Leonora four hundred and fifty pounds as her share of the profits of the firm for nine 319months But long before that Leonora was rich Uncle Meshach had died and left her the Myatt fortune for life with remainder to the three girls absolutely in equal shares Fred was the executor and trustee and Freds own share of the bounty was a total remission of Meshachs loan to him Thus it is that providence watches over the wealthy the luxurious and the wellconnected and over the lilies of the field who toil not
Aroused from lethargy by the dramatic circumstances of her fathers death Rose had resumed her reading with a vigour that amounted almost to fury In the following January she miraculously passed the Matriculation examination of London University in the first division and on returning home she informed Leonora that she had decided to go back to London and study medicine at a hospital for women
But of the three girls it was Millicent who had made the most history Millicent was rapidly developing the natural gift so precious to the theatrical artist of existing picturesquely in the eye of the public When the rehearsals of Princess Ida began for the annual performance of the Operatic Society Milly confidently expected to receive the principal part despite the fact that Lucy Turner who had the prescriptive right to it was once more in a position to sing and Milly 320was not disappointed As a heroine of comic opera she now accounted herself an extremely serious person and it soon became apparent that the conductor and his prima donna would have to decide between them who was to control the rehearsals while Milly was on the stage One evening a difference of opinion as to the tempo of a song and chorus reached the condition of being acute Exasperated by the pretty and wayward child the conductor laid down his stick and lighted a cigarette and those who knew him knew that the rehearsal would not proceed until the duel had been fought to a finish Milly thought hard and said Mr Corfe says the Hanbridge people would jump at me My good girl the conductor replied Mr Corfes views on the acrobatic propensities of the Hanbridge people are just a shade off the point Every one laughed except Milly She possessed little appreciation of wit and she had scarcely understood the remark but she had an objection to the laughter and a very strong objection to being the conductors good girl The instant result was that she vowed never again to sing or act under his baton and took the entire Society to witness her place was filled by Lucy Turner The Hanbridge Society happened to be doing Patience that year and they justified 321Mr Corfes prediction Moreover they hired the Hanbridge Theatre Royal for six nights On the first night Milly was enthusiastically applauded by two thousand people and in addition to half a column of praise in the Signal she had the happiness of being mentioned in the district news of the Manchester Guardian and the Birmingham Daily Post She deemed it magnificent for her Leonora tried to think so too But on the fourth day the Hanbridge conductor was in bed with influenza and the Bursley conductor upon a flattering request undertook his work for the remaining nights Milly broke her vow her practical common sense was really wonderful On the last and most glorious night of the six after responding to several frenzied calls Milly was inspired to seize the conductor in the wings and drag him with her before the curtain The effect was tremendous The conductor had won but he very willingly admitted that in losing the adorable chit had triumphed over him The episode was gossip for many days
And this was by no means the end of the matter The agentinadvance of one of the touring musicalcomedy companies of Lionel Belmont the famous AngloAmerican manager was in Hanbridge during that week and after seeing Milly in the piece he 322telegraphed to Liverpool where his company was and the next day the manager visited Hanbridge incognito Then Harry Burgess began to play a part in Millicents history Harry had abandoned his stool at the Bank expressing his intention to undertake some large commercial enterprise he had persuaded his mother to find the capital The leisurely search for a large commercial enterprise precisely suited to Harrys tastes necessitated frequent sojourns in London Harry became a manabouttown and a member of the renowned New Fantastics Club The New Fantastics were powerful supporters of the dramatic art and the roll of the club included numerous theatrical stars of magnitudes varying from the first to the tenth It was during one of the clubs official excursions—in pantechnicon vans—to a suburban theatre where a good French actress was performing that Harry made the acquaintance of that important man Louis Lewis Belmonts head representative in Europe Louis Lewis over champagne asked Harry if he knew a Millicent Stanway of Bursley The effect of the conversation was that Harry came home and astounded Milly by telling her what Louis Lewis had authorised him to say There were conferences between Leonora and Milly and Mr Cecil Corfe a journey to Manchester hesitations excitations thrills and in 323the end an arrangement Millicent was to go to London to be finally appraised and probably to sign a contract for a sixteenweeks provincial tour at three pounds a week
Leonoras prevailing mood was the serenity of high resolve and of resignation She had renounced the chance of ecstasy She was sad but she was not unhappy The melancholy which filled the secret places of her soul was sweet and radiant and she had proved the ancient truth that he who gives up all finds all Still in rich possession of beauty and health she nevertheless looked forward to nothing but old age—an old age of solitude and sufferance Hannah and Meshach were gone John was gone and she alone seemed to be left of the elder generations In four days Ethel was to be married Already for more than three months Rose had been in London and in a fortnight Leonora was to take Millicent there And when Ethel was married and perhaps a mother and Rose versed and absorbed in the art and craft of obstetrics and the name of Millicent familiar in the mouths of clubmen what was Leonora to do then She could not control her daughters she could scarcely guide them Ethel knew only one law Freds wish and Rose had too much intellect and Millicent 324too little heart to submit to her Since Johns death the house had been the abode of peace and amiability but it had also been Liberty Hall If sometimes Leonora regretted that she could not more dominantly impress herself upon her children she never doubted that on the whole the new republic was preferable to the old tyranny What then had she to do She had to watch over her girls and especially over Rose and Milly And as she sat in the garden with Bran at her feet in the solitude which foreshadowed the more poignant solitude to come she said to herself with passionate maternity I shall watch over them If anything occurs I shall always be ready And this blissful and transforming thought this vehement purpose allayed somewhat the misgivings which she had long had about Millicent and which her recent glimpses into the factitious and erratic world of the theatre had only served to increase
It was Millys affair which had at length brought Leonora to the point of communicating with Arthur Twemlow In the first weeks of widowhood the most terrible of her life she could not dream of writing to him Then the sacrifice had dimly shaped itself in her mind and while actually engaged in fighting against it she hesitated to send any message whatever And 325when she realised that the sacrifice was inevitable for her when she inwardly knew that Arthur and the splendid rushing life of New York must be renounced in obedience to the double instinct of maternity and of repentance she could not write She felt timorous she was unable to frame the sentences And she procrastinated ruled by her characteristic quality of supineness Once she heard that he had been over to London and gone back she drew a deep breath as though a peril had been escaped and procrastinated further Then came the overtures from Lionel Belmont or at least from his agents to Milly Belmont was a New Yorker and the notion suddenly struck her of writing to Arthur for information about Belmont It was a capricious notion but it provided an extrinsic excuse for a letter which might be followed by another of more definite import In the end she was obliged to yield to it She wrote as she had performed every act of her relationship with Arthur unwillingly in spite of her reason governed by a strange and arbitrary impulse No sooner was the letter in the pillarbox than she began to wonder what Arthur would say in his response and how she should answer that response She grew impatient and restless and called at the chief Post Office in Bursley for information about the American mails On this 326evening as Leonora sat in the garden Milly was reciting at a concert at Knype and Ethel and Fred had accompanied her Leonora resisting some pressure had declined to go with them Assuming that Arthur wrote on the day he received her missive his reply she had ascertained ought to be delivered in Hillport the next morning but there was just a chance that it might be delivered that night Hence she had stayed at home expectant and—with all her serenity—a little nervous and excited
Carpenter emerged from the region of the stable and began to water some flowerbeds in the vicinity of her seat
Terrible dry month weve had maam he murmured in his quiet pastoral voice waving the can to and fro
She agreed perfunctorily Her mind was divided between suspense concerning the postman contemplation of the placid vista of the remainder of her career and pleasure in the languorous charm of the May evening
Bran moved his head and rising ponderously walked round the seat towards the house Then Carpenter following the dog with his eyes smiled and touched his cap Leonora turned sharply Arthur Twemlow himself stood on the 327step of the drawingroom window and Bessies white apron was just disappearing within
In the first glance Leonora noticed that Arthur was considerably thinner She was overcome by a violent emotion that contained both fear and joy And as he approached her agitated and unsmiling the joy said How heavenly it is to see him again But the fear asked Why is he so worn What have you been doing to him all these months Leonora She met him in the middle of the lawn and they shook hands timidly clumsily embarrassed Carpenter with that inborn delicacy of tact which is the mark of a simple soul walked away out of sight and Bran receiving no attention followed him
Were you surprised to see me Arthur lamely questioned
In their hearts a thousand sensations struggled some for expression others for concealment and speech pathetically unequal to the swift crisis was disconcerted by it almost to the verge of impotence
Yes she said Very
You ought not to have been he replied
His tone alarmed her Why she said When did you get my letter
Just after one oclock today
328Today
I was in London It was sent on to me from New York
She was relieved When she saw him first at the window she had a lightning vision of him tearing open her letter in New York jumping instantly into a cab and boarding the English steamer This had frightened her It was if not exactly reassuring at any rate less terrifying to learn that he had flown to her only from London
Well he exclaimed hows everybody And where are the girls
She gave the news and then they walked together to the seat and sat down in silence
You dont look too well she ventured Youve been working too hard
He passed his hand across his forehead and moved on the seat so as to meet her eyes directly
Quite the reverse he said I havent been working half hard enough
Not half hard enough she repeated mechanically
As his eyes caught hers and held them she was conscious of an exquisite but mortal tremor her spine seemed to give way The old desire for youth and love for that brilliant and tender existence in which were united virtue and the 329flavour of sin dalliance and high endeavour eternal appetite and eternal satisfaction rushed wondrously over her The life which she had mapped out for herself suddenly appeared miserable inadequate even contemptible Was she with her rich blood her perfect health her proud carriage her indestructible beauty and her passionate soul to wither solitary in the cold shadow She felt intensely as every human heart feels sometimes that the satisfactions of duty were chimerical and that the only authentic bliss was to be found in a wild and utter abandonment to instinct No matter what the cost of rapture in selfrespect or in remorse it was worth the cost Why did not mankind rise up and put an end to this endless crucifixion of instinct which saddened the whole earth and say gloriously Let us live And in a moment dalliance without endeavour and the flavour of sin without virtue were beautiful ideals for her She could have put her arms round Arthurs neck and drawn him to her and blotted out all the past and sullied all the future with one kiss She wondered what recondite force dissuaded her from doing so I have but to lift my arms and smile she thought
Youve been very cruel said Arthur I wouldnt have believed you could have been so 330cruel I guess you didnt know how cruel you were Why didnt you write before
I couldnt she answered submissively Didnt you understand The question was not quite ingenuous but she meant it well
I understood at first he said I knew you would want to wait I knew how upset youd be—I—I think I knew all youd feel But it will soon be eighteen months ago His voice was full of emotion Then he smiled gravely and charmingly However its finished now and Im here
His indictment was very kind very mild but she could see how he had suffered and that his wrath against her had been none the less genuine because it was the wrath of love She grew more and more humble before his gaze so adoring and so reproachful She knew that she had been selfish and that she had ransomed her conscience as much at his expense as at her own She perceived the vital inferiority of women to men—that quality of callousness which allows them to commit all cruelties in the name of self-sacrifice and that lack of imagination by which they are blinded to the wounds they deal Women have brief moods in which they judge themselves as men judge them in which they escape from their sex and know the truth Such a mood came then 331to Leonora And she wished ardently to compensate Arthur for the martyrdom which she had inflicted on him They were close to one another. The atmosphere between them was electric And the darkness of a calm and delicious night was falling Could she not obey her instinct and in one bright word one word laden with the invitation and acquiescence of femininity atone for her sin against him Could she not shatter the images of Rose and Milly who loved her after their hard fashion but who would never thank her for her watchful affection—would even resent it Vain hope
Oh she exclaimed grievously trying uselessly to keep the dream of joyous indulgence from fading away I must tell you—I cannot leave them
Leave whom
The girls—Rose and Milly I darent You dont know what I went through after Johns death—and I cant desert them I should have told you in my next letter
Her tones moved not only him but herself He was obliged at once to receive what she said with the utmost seriousness as something fully weighed and considered
Do you mean he demanded that you wont marry me and come to New York
332I cant I cant she replied
He got up and walked along the garden towards the meadow so far that in the twilight her eyes could scarcely distinguish his figure against the bushes Then he returned
Just let me hear all about the girls He stood in front of her
You see she said entreatingly when she had hurried through her recital I couldnt leave them could I
But instead of answering he questioned her further about Millys projects and made suggestions and they seemed to have been discussing the complex subject for an hour before she found a chance to reassert plaintively I couldnt leave them
Youre entirely wrong he said firmly and authoritatively Youve just got an idea fixed in your head and its all wrong all wrong
It isnt as if they were going to be married she obstinately pursued the sequence of her argument Ethel now——
Married he cried roused Are we to wait patiently you and I until Rose and Milly choose to get married He was bitterly scornful Is that our rôle I fancy I know something about Rose and Milly and allow me to tell you they never will get married neither of them 333They arent the marrying sort Not but what thats beside the point Yes he continued and if there ever were two girls in this world able to look after themselves without parental assistance Rose and Milly are those two
You dont understand women you dont know you dont understand she murmured She was shocked and hurt by this candid and hostile expression of opinion concerning Rose and Milly whom hitherto he had always appeared to like
No he retorted with solemn resentment And no other man either Before when they needed your protection perhaps when your husband was alive you would have left Rose and Milly then wouldnt you Wouldnt you
Oh the exclamation escaped her unawares She burst into a sob She had not meant to cry but she was crying
He sat down close to her and put his hand on her shoulder and leaned over her My dearest girl he whispered in a new voice of infinite softness youve forgotten that you have a duty to yourself and to me as well as to Rose and Milly Our lives want looking after too Were human creatures you know you and I This row that were having now has occurred thousands of times before but this time its going to be settled with common sense isnt it 334And he kissed her with a kiss as soft as his voice
She sighed Still perplexed and unconvinced she was nevertheless in those minutes acutely happy The mysterious and profound affinity of the flesh had made a truce between the warring principles of the male and of the female a truce only To the left of the house over the Marsh the last silver relics of day hung in the distant sky She looked at the dying light so provocative of melancholy in its reluctance to depart and at the timidlyappearing stars and the sombre trees and her thought was World how beautiful and sad you are
Bran emerged forlorn from the gloom and rested his great chin confidingly on her knees
Bran she condoled with him through her tears stroking the dogs head tenderly Ah Bran
Arthur stood up resolute victorious but prudent and magnanimous too He put one foot on the seat beside her and leaned forward on the raised knee tapping his stick Ive hired a flat over there he said low in her ear such as cant be gotten outside of New York And in my thoughts Ive made a space for you in New York where its life and no mistake and where Im known and where my interests are And if 335you didnt come I dont know what I should do I tell you fair I dont know what I should do And wouldnt your life be spoilt Wouldnt it But it isnt the flat Ive got and it isnt the space Ive sort of cleared and it isnt the ruin and smash for you and me—it isnt so much these things that make me feel wicked when I think of the mere possibility of you refusing to come as the fundamental injustice of the thing to both of us My dear girl no one ever understood you as I do I can see it all as well as if Id been here all the time You took fright after—after his death Women are always more frightened after the dangers over than at the time especially when theyre brave And you thought I must do something very good because it was on the cards I might have been very wicked And so its Rose and Milly that mustnt be left Im not much of an intellect outside crocks you know but theres one thing I can do I can see clear Cant I see clear
Their hands met in the dogs fur She was still crying but she smiled up at him admiringly and appreciatively
If Rose and Milly want a change any time he continued let em come over And we can come to Europe just as often as you feel that way Eh
336Why she meditated cannot this last for ever She felt so feminine and illogical and the masculine masterful rationality of his appeal touched her so intimately that she had discovered in the woe and the indecision of her situation a kind of happiness And she wished to keep what she had got At length a certain courage and resolution visited her and summoning all her sweetness she said to him Dont press me please please In a fortnight I shall be in London with Milly Will you wait a fortnight Will you wait that long I know that what you say is—You will wait that long wont you Youll be in London then to meet us
God he exclaimed deeply moved by the fainting beseeching poignancy of her voice I will wait forty fortnights And I guess I shall be in London
She sank back on the reprieve as on a pillow
Of course Ill wait he repeated lightly and his tone said I understand Life isnt all logic and allowances must be made Women are women—thats what makes them so adorable—and Im not in a hurry
They did not speak further
A moving patch of white on the path indicated Bessie
If you please maam shall I set supper for 337five she asked vivaciously in the summer darkness
There was a silence
Im not staying Bessie said Twemlow
Thank you sir Come along Bran come kennel
The great beast slouched off and left them together
Guess whos been Leonora demanded of her girls and Fred with feverish gaiety when they returned from the concert The diningroom was very cheerful and brightly lit outside lay the dark garden and Bran reflective in his kennel No one could guess Arthur and so Leonora had to tell They were surprised and they were interested but not for long Millicent was preoccupied with her successful performance at the concert and Ethel and Fred had had a brilliant idea This couple were to commence married life modestly in Uncle Meshachs house but the place was being repaired and redecorated and there seemed to be an annoying probability that it would not be finished for immediate occupation after the short honeymoon—Fred could only spare two weekends from the works Why should they not return on the very day when Leonora and Milly were to go to London 338and keep house at Hillport during Leonoras absence Such was the brilliant idea one of those domestic ideas whose manifold excellences call for interminable explanation and discussion The name of Arthur Twemlow was not again mentioned
339
CHAPTER XII
IN LONDON
The last day of the dramatic portion of Leonoras life was that on which she went to London with Milly They were up early in order to catch the morning express and before leaving Leonora arranged with the excited Bessie all details for the reception of Ethel and Fred who were to arrive in the afternoon from their honeymoon I will drive she said to Carpenter when the cart was brought round and Carpenter had to sit behind among the trunks Bessie in her morning print and her engagement ring stood at the front door and sped them beneficently away while clinging hard to Bran
As the train rushed smoothly across the vast and rich plain of Middle England Leonoras thoughts dwelt on the house at Hillport on her skilled and sympathetic servants on Prince and Bran and on the calm and the orderliness and the high decency of everything And she pictured the homecoming of Ethel and Fred 340from Wales—Fred stiff and nervous and Ethel flushed beautiful and utterly bewitching in the self-consciousness of the bride May I call her Mrs Fred maam Bessie had asked recoiling from the formality of Mrs Ryley and aware that Miss Ethel was no longer possible Leonora saw them in the diningroom consuming the tea which Bessie had determined should be the final word of teas and she saw Bessie in that perfect black of hers and that miraculous muslin waiting at table with a superlative and cold primness that covered a desire to take Ethel in her arms and kiss her And she saw the pair afterwards dallying on the lawn with Bran at dusk simple unambitious unassuming content and still later Fred meticulously locking up the great house so much too large and complicated for one timid couple and Ethel standing at the top of the stairs as he extinguished the hallgas These visions of them made her feel sad—sad because Ethel could never again be that which she had been and because she was so young inexperienced confiding and beautiful and would gradually grow old and lose the ineffable grace of her years and situation and because they were both so innocent of the meaning of life Leonora yearned for some magic to stay the destructive hand of time and keep them ever 341thus young naïve trustful and unspoilt And knowing that this could not be she wanted intensely to shield and teach and advise them She whispered thinking of Ethel Ah I must always be near within reach within call lest she should need me
Mother shall you go with me to see Mr Louis Lewis tomorrow Milly demanded suddenly when the train halted at Rugby
Yes of course dear Dont you wish me to
Oh I dont mind said Milly grandly
Two welldressed middleaged men entered the compartment which till then Leonora and Milly had had to themselves and while duly admiring Leonora they could not refrain from looking continually at Millicent they talked to one another gravely and they made a pretence of reading newspapers but their eyes always returned furtively to Millys corner The girl was not by any means confused by the involuntary homage which merely heightened her restless vitality She chattered to her mother she was pert she looked out of the window she tapped the floor with her brown shoes In the unconscious process of displaying her individuality for admiration she was never still The fair pretty face under the straw hat responded to each appreciative 342glance and beneath her fine blue coat and skirt the muscles of the immature body and limbs played perpetually in graceful and free movement She was adorable she knew it Leonora knew it the two middleaged men knew it Nothing—no pertness no audacity no silliness no affectation—could impair the extraordinary charm Leonora was exceedingly proud of her daughter And yet she reflected impartially that Millicent was a little fool She trembled for Millicent she feared to let her out of sight the idea of Millicent loose in the world with no guide but her own rashness and no protection but her vanity made Leonora feel sick Nevertheless Millicent would soon be loose in the world and at the best Leonora could only stand in the background ready for emergency
At Euston they were not surprised to see Harry The young man was more dandiacal and correct than ever and he could cut a figure on the platform but Leonora observed the pallor of his thin cheeks and the watery redness of his eyes He had come to meet them and he insisted on escorting them to their hotel in South Kensington
Look here he said in the cab Ive one dying request to make before the luggage drops through the roof I want you both to come and 343dine with me at the Majestic tonight and then well go to the Regency Lewis has given me a box By the way I told him he might rely on me to take you up to see him tomorrow
Shall we mother Milly asked carelessly but it was obvious that she wished to dine at the Majestic
I dont know said Leonora Theres Rose Were going to fetch Rose from the hospital this afternoon Harry and she will spend the evening with us
Well Rose must come too of course Harry replied quickly after a slight hesitation It will do her good
We will see said Leonora She had known Harry from his infancy and when she encountered him in these latter days she was always subject to the illusion that he could not really be a man but was rather playing at manhood Moreover she had warned Arthur Twemlow of their arrival and expected to find a letter from him at the hotel and she could make no arrangements until she had seen the letter
They drove into the courtyard of the select and austere establishment where John Stanway had brought his wife on her wedding journey Leonora found that it had scarcely changed the dark entrance lounge presented the same appear344ance now as it had done more than twenty years ago it had the same air of receiving visitors with condescension the whole street was the same She grew thoughtful and Harrys witticisms as he ceremoniously superintended their induction into the place served only to deepen the shadow in her heart
Any letters for me she asked the hall porter loitering behind while Millicent and Harry went into the salle à manger
What name madam No madam
But during luncheon to which Harry stayed a flunkey approached bearing a telegram on silver In a moment she thought I shall know when we are to meet And she trembled with apprehension The flunkey however gave the telegram to Millicent who accepted it as though she had been accepting telegrams at the hands of flunkeys all her life
Miss Stanway she smiled superiorly with her chin forward perceiving the look on Leonoras face She tore the envelope Lewis says I am to go today at four instead of tomorrow Hooray the sooner its over the sooner to sleep though the harbour bar be mo—oaning Ma thats the very time you have to meet Rose at the hospital Harry you shall take me
345Leonora would have preferred that Harry and Millicent should not go alone together to see Mr Louis Lewis But she could not bring herself to break the appointment with Rose who was extremely sensitive nor could she well inform Harry at this stage of his close intimacy with the family that she no longer cared to entrust Milly to his charge
She left the hotel before the other two because she had further to drive The hansom had scarcely got into the street when she instructed the driver to return
Of course you will settle nothing definitely with Mr Lewis she said to Milly Tell him I wish to see him first
Oh mother the girl cried pouting
At the New Female and Maternity Hospital in Lambs Conduit Street Leonora was shown to a bench in the central hall and requested to sit down The clock over the first landing of the double staircase indicated three minutes to four During the drive she had begun by expecting to meet Arthur on his way to the hotel and even in Piccadilly where delays of traffic had forced upon her attention the glittering opulence and afternoon splendour of the London season she had still thought of him and of the interview 346which was to pass between them But here she was obsessed by her immediate environment The approach to the hospital through sombre squalid streets past narrow courts in which innumerable children tumbled and yelled disturbed and desolated her It appeared that she had entered the secret breedingquarter of the immense city the obscene district where misery teemed and generated and where the revolting fecundity of nature was proved amid surroundings of horror and despair And the hospital itself was the very centre the innermost temple of all this ceaseless parturition In a corner of the hall near a door waited a small crowd of embossed women young and middleaged sad weary unkempt lightly dressed in shabby shapeless clothes and sweltering in the summer heat a few had babies in their arms In the doorway two neatly attired youngish women either doctors or students held an animated and interminable conversation staring absentmindedly at the attendant crowd A pale nurse came hurrying from the back of the hall and vanished through the doorway squeezing herself between the doctors or students who soon afterwards followed her still talking and then one by one the embossed women began to vanish through the doorway also The clock gently struck four and 347Leonora sighing watched the hand creep to five minutes and to ten beyond the hour She gazed up the well of the staircases and in imagination saw ward after ward floor above floor of beds on which lay repulsive and piteous creatures in fear in pain in exhaustion And she thought with dismay how many more poor immortal souls went out of that building than ever went into it Rose is somewhere up there she reflected At a quarter past four a stout whitehaired lady briskly descended the stairs and after being accosted twice by officials spoke to Leonora
You are Mrs Stanway My name is Smithson I dare say your daughter has mentioned it in her letters The famous dean of the hospital smiled and paused while Leonora responded Just at the moment Miss Smithson continued dear Rosalys is engaged but I hope she will be down directly We are very very busy Are you making a long stay in London Mrs Stanway The season is now in full swing is it not
Leonora could find little to say to this experienced spinster whom she unwillingly admired but with whom she was not in accord Miss Smithson uttered amiable banalities with an evident intention to do nothing more her demeanour was preoccupied and she made no 348further reference to Rose Soon a nurse respectfully called her she hastened away full of apologies leaving Leonora to meditate upon her own shortcomings as a serious person and upon the futility of her existence of fortyone years
Another quarter of an hour elapsed and then Rose ran impetuously down the stone steps
Mother Im so glad to see you Wheres Milly she exclaimed eagerly and they kissed twice
As she answered the greeting Leonora noticed the lines of fatigue in Roses face the brilliancy of her eyes the emaciation of the body beneath her grey alpaca dress and that air of false serenity masking hysteric excitement which she seemed to have noticed too in all the other officials—the doctors or students the nurses and even the dean
Are you ready now dear she asked
Oh I cant possibly come today mother Didnt Miss Smithson tell you Im awfully sorry I cant But theres a very important case on I can only stay a minute
But my child we have arranged to take you to the theatre Leonora was on the point of expostulating She checked herself and placidly replied Im sorry too When shall you be free
349Might be able to get off tomorrow Ill slip out in the morning and send you a telegram
I should like you to try and be free tomorrow my dear You seem as if you needed a rest Do you take any exercise
As much as I can
But you know Rose——
Thats all right mater Rose interrupted confidently patting her mothers arm We can look after ourselves here dont you worry Have you seen Mr Twemlow yet
Not yet Why
Nothing But he called to see me yesterday Were great friends I must run back now
Leonora departed with the girls hasty kiss on her lips realising that she had fallen to the level of a mere episodic interest in Roses life The impassioned student of obstetrics had disappeared up the staircase before Leonora could reach the doubledoors of the entrance The mother was dashed stricken a little humiliated But as she arranged the folds of her beautiful dress in the hansom which was carrying her away from Lambs Conduit Street towards South Kensington she said to herself firmly I am not a ninny after all and I know that Rose will be ill soon And there are things in that hospital that I could manage better
350Mr Twemlow came to see you just after you left said Harry when he restored Milly to her mother at halfpast five I asked him to join us at dinner but he said he couldnt However hes coming to the theatre to our box
You must excuse us from dining with you tonight Harry was Leonoras reply Well meet you at the theatre
Yes Harry said Millicent coldly We really cant come today
The hand of the Lord is heavy upon me Harry murmured And he repeated the phrase on leaving the hotel
Neither he nor Millicent had shown much interest in Roses defection The dandy seemed to be relieved and Millicent said How stupid of her Milly had returned from the visit to Mr Louis Lewis in a state of high selfsatisfaction Leonora was told that Mr Lewis was simply the most delightful and polite man that Milly had ever met he would be charmed to see Mrs Stanway and would make an appointment Meanwhile Milly gave her mother to understand that the affair was practically settled She knew the date when the tour of Princess Puck started and the various towns which it would include and Mr Lewis had provided her with a 351box for the next afternoon at the Queens Theatre where the piece had been most successfully produced a month ago the music she would receive by post and the first rehearsal of the No I Company would occur within a week or so Millicent walked in flowery paths She saw herself covered with jewels and compliments flattered adored worshipped and leading always a life of superb luxury And this prophetic dream was not the conception of a credulous fancy but the product of the hard and calculating shrewdness which she possessed She was aware of the importance of Mr Louis Lewis who on behalf of Lionel Belmont absolutely controlled three West End theatres and she was also aware of the effect which she had had upon him She knew that in her personality there was a mysterious something which intoxicated not all the men with whom she came in contact but most of them and men of utterly different sorts She did not trouble to attempt any analysis of that quality she accepted it as a natural phenomenon and she meant to use it ruthlessly for she was almost incapable of pity or gratitude It was for instance her intention to drop Harry she had no further use for him now She was learning to forget her childish awe of Leonora a very little time and she would implacably force her mother 352to recognise that even the semblance of parental control must cease
And I am to have my photograph taken mamma she exclaimed triumphantly Mr Lewis says that Antonios in Regent Street will be only too glad to take it for nothing Hes going to send them a line
Leonora was silent Deep in her heart she made a gesture of appeal to each of her daughters—to Ethel who was immersed in love to Rose who was absorbed by a vocation and to this seductive minx whose venal lips would only smile to gain an end—and each seemed to throw her a glance indifferent or preoccupied and to say Presently presently When I can spare a moment And she thought bitterly how Rose had been content to receive her mother in the public hall of the hospital
They were late in arriving at the theatre because the cab could not get through Piccadilly and Harry was impatiently expecting them in the foyer His brow smoothed at once when he caught sight of them and he admired their dresses and escorted them up the celebrated marble stairs with youthful pride
I thought no one was going to supervene he smiled I was afraid youd all been murdered 353in patent asphyxiating hansoms I dont know whats happened to Twemlow I must leave word with the people here which box hes to come to
Perhaps he wont come thought Leonora Perhaps I shall not see him till tomorrow
Harrys box was exactly in the middle of the semicircle of boxes which surround the balcony of the Regency Theatre They were ushered into it with the precautions of silence for the three hundred and fiftyfifth performance of The Dolmenico Doll the unique musical comedy from New York had already commenced Leonora and Milly sat in front and Harry drew up a chair so that he might whisper in their ears he was very talkative Leonora could see nothing clearly at first Then gradually the crowded auditorium arranged itself in her mind She perceived the semicircle of boxes each exactly like their own and each filled with women quite as elegantly gowned as she and Millicent and men as dandiacal and correct as Harry and in the balcony and in the stalls were serried regular rows of elaborate coiffures and shining bald heads and all the seats seemed to be pervaded by the glitter of gems the winglike beating of fans and the restless curving of arms She had not visited London for many years and this multitudinous 354and wholesale opulence startled her Under other circumstances she would have enjoyed it intensely and basked in it as a flower in the sunshine tonight however she could not dismiss the image of Rose in the gaunt hospital in Lambs Conduit Street She knew the comparison was crude she assured herself that there must always be rich and poor idle and industrious gay and sorrowful elegant and shabby arrogant and meek but her discomfort none the less persisted and she had the uneasy feeling that the whole of civilisation was wrong and that Rose and the earnest ones were justified in their scorn of such as her And concurrently she dwelt upon Ethel and Fred at that hour and listened with anxiety for the opening of the boxdoor and the entry of Arthur Twemlow
She imagined that owing to their late arrival she must have missed the one essential clue to the plot of The Dolmenico Doll and as the gorgeously decorated action was developed on the dazzling stage she tried in vain to grasp its significance The fall of the curtain came as a surprise to her The end of the first act had left her with nothing but a confused notion of the interior of a confectioners shop and young men therein getting tipsy and stealing kisses and marvellously pretty girls submitting to the robbery with a nonchalance 355born of three hundred and fifty four similar experiences and old men grotesque in a dissolute senility and sudden bursts of orchestral music and simpering ballads and comic refrains and crashing choruses and lights lingerie picturehats and short skirts and over all dominating all the set eternal mechanical bored smile of the pretty girls
Awfully good isnt it said Harry when the generous applause had ceased
Its simply lovely Milly agreed fidgeting on her chair in juvenile rapture
Yes Leonora admitted And she indeed thought that parts of it were amusing and agreeable
Of course Harry remarked hastily to Leonora Princess Puck isnt at all like this Its an idyll sort of thing you know By the way hadnt I better go out and offer a reward for the recovery of Twemlow
He returned just as the curtain went up bringing a faint odour of whisky but without Twemlow
A few moments later while the principal pretty girl was warbling an invitation to her lover amid the diversions of Narragansett Pier the latch of the door clicked and Arthur noiselessly entered the box He nodded cheerfully mur356muring Sorry Im so late and then shook hands with Leonora She could not find her voice In the hazard of rearranging the seats an operation which Harry from diffidence conducted with a certain clumsiness Arthur was placed behind Milly while Leonora had Harry by her side
Youve missed all the first act and everyone says its the best Milly remarked leaning towards Arthur with an air of intimacy And Harry expressed agreement
But you must remember I saw it in New York two years ago Leonora heard him whisper in reply
She liked his avuncular slightly quizzical attitude to them He reinforced the elder generation in the box reducing by his mere presence the two young and callow creatures to their proper position in the scheme of things
And now the question of her future relations with Arthur which hitherto she had in a manner shunned at once became peremptory for Leonora She was conscious of a passionate tenderness for him he seemed to her to have qualities indefinable and exquisite touches of character which she had never observed in any other human being But she was in control of her heart She had chosen and she knew that she could abide by her choice She was uplifted by 357the force of one of those tremendous and invincible resolutions which women alone with their instinctive bent towards martyrdom are capable of making And the resolution was not the fruit of the day the result of all that she had recently seen and thought It was a resolution independent of particular circumstances a simple admission of the naked fact that she could not desert her daughters If Ethel had been shrewd and worldly and Rose temperate in her altruism and Milly modest and sage the resolution would not have been modified She dared not abandon her daughters the blood in her veins the stern traits inherited from her irreproachable ancestors forbade it She might be convinced in argument—and she vividly remembered everything that Arthur had said—she might admit that she was wrong that her sacrifice would be futile and that she was about to be guilty of a terrible injustice to Arthur and to herself No matter She would not leave the girls And if in thus obstinately remaining at their service she committed a sin she could only ask pardon for that sin She could only beg Arthur to forgive her and assure him that he would forget and submit to his reproaches in silence and humility Now and then she gazed at him but his eyes were always fixed on the stage and the corners of his 358mouth turned down into a slightly ironic smile She wondered if he expected to be able to persuade her and whether an opportunity to convince him and so end the crisis would occur that evening or whether she would be compelled to wait through another night
At last the adventures of the Dolmenico Doll were concluded the naughty kisses regularised the old men finally befooled the glory extinguished the music hushed The audience stood up and began to chatter and the women curved their long arms backward to receive white cloaks from the men Arthur led the way out with Milly and as the party slowly proceeded through the crush into the foyer Leonora could hear the impetuous and excited child delivering to him her professional views on the acting and the singing
Well Burgess Arthur said in the portico I guess well see these ladies home eh And he called to a commissionaire Say two hansoms
In a minute Leonora and Arthur were driving together along the scintillating nocturnal thoroughfare he had put Harry and Millicent into the other hansom like school children And in the sudden privacy of the vehicle Leonora thought Now She looked up at him 359furtively from beneath her eyelashes He caught the glance and shook his head sadly
Why do you shake your head she timidly began
His kind shrewd eyes caressed her You mustnt look at me so he said
Why
I cant stand it he replied Its too much for me You dont know—you dont know You think Im calm enough but I tell you the top of my head has nearly come off today
But I——
Listen here he ran on Let me finish up What I said a fortnight ago was quite right It was absolutely unanswerable But there was something about your letter that upset me I cant tell you what it was—only it made my heart beat And then yesterday I happened to go and worry out Rose at that awful hospital And then Milly tonight I know how you feel Ive got it to the eighth of an inch And Ive thought Suppose I do get her to New York and she isnt happy Well its right here Ive settled to sell my business over there and fix up in London What do I care for New York anyway I dont care for anything so long as we can be happy Ive been a bachelor too long And if I can be alone with you in this 360London lost in it just you and me Oh well I want a woman to think about—one woman all mine Im simply mad for it And we can only live once We shant be short of money Now dont look at me any more like you did Say yes and lets begin right away and be happy
Do you really mean—— She was obliged thus in weak unfinished phrases to gain time in order to recover from the shock
Im going to cable tomorrow morning he said joyously Not that theres so much hurry as all that but I shall feel better after Ive cabled Im silly and I want to be silly I wouldnt live in New York for a million now And dont you think we can keep an eye on Rose and Millicent between us
Oh Arthur
She breathed a long deep sigh shutting her eyes for an instant and then the beautiful creature with all her elegance and her appearance of impassive and fastidious calm permitted herself to move infinitesimally but perceptibly closer to him in the hansom and her spirit performed the supreme feminine act of acquiescence and surrender She thought passionately He has yielded to me—I will be his slave
I shall call you Leo he murmured fondly It occurred to me last night
361She smiled as if to say How charmingly boyish you are
And I must tell you—but see here we shall be at your hotel too soon He pushed at the trapdoor Say driver go up Park Lane and along Oxford Street a bit
Then he explained to her how he had refused Harrys invitation to dinner and had arrived late at the theatre solely that he might not have to talk to her until they could talk in solitude
As later the cab rolled swiftly southwards through the mysterious dark avenues of Hyde Park Leonora had the sensation of being really alone with him in the very heart of that luxurious voluptuous and decadent civilisation for which she had always yearned and in which she was now to participate The feeling of the beauty of the world and of its catholicity and manysidedness returned to her She gave play to her instincts And revelling in the self-confidence and the masterful ascendency which underlay Arthurs usual reticent demeanour she resumed with exquisite relief her natural supineness She began to depend on him And she foresaw how he would reason diplomatically with Rose and watch between Milly and Mr Louis Lewis and perhaps assist Fred Ryley and do in the best way everything that ought to be done 362and how she would reward him with the consolations of her grace and charm her feminine arts and her sweet acquiescence
So youve come exclaimed Milly rather desolate in the drawingroom of the hotel
Yes Miss Muffet said Arthur weve come Where is the youth
Harry I made him go home
Leonora smiled indulgently at Millicent with her pretty pouting face and her adorable artificiality lounging on one of the sofas in the vast garish chamber And her thoughts flew to Ethel and existence in Bursley The Myatt family had risen flourished and declined Some of its members were dead in honour or in dishonour others were scattered now Only Ethel and Fred remained and these two in the house at Hillport which Leonora meant to give them were beginning again the eternal effort and renewing the simple and austere traditions of the Five Towns where luxury was suspect and decadence unknown